‘Oh, definitely,’ the grey-haired man agreed.
She found herself telling Mr Mulholland about cycling from Culleen to school every day with Letty and James. She described Miss Mullover’s schoolroom, with the map of Ireland that showed the rivers and the mountains and the other one that showed the counties in different colours. They would all crouch round the stove on a very cold day, permitted to leave their desks by Miss Mullover. Twelve or thirteen pupils there were, sometimes a few more, sometimes less, depending.
‘What’ll you have?’
The bald man had rejoined them. He had a Woolworth’s bladder, he said, and Mr Mulholland reprimanded him. Mr Mulholland put his arm round Mary Louise’s waist again, as if to protect her from such observations. She said she’d like another cherry brandy.
One of the boys in the corner began to sing, softly beating time on the surface of the table with his fingers. Mary Louise could feel the palm of Mr Mulholland’s hand massaging her hip-bone, but she knew he meant no harm. She remembered the safety-pin she’d brought to the Electric the first time she’d gone there with Elmer. She smiled. Ridiculous it seemed now; ridiculous of Letty to suggest it.
‘Sorry about that reference I made,’ the bald man apologized, handing her another drink. They’d find the place they were staying to their liking, he predicted. Family run. He hadn’t made a complaint in twenty-two years.
‘It seems nice,’ Mary Louise agreed.
Mr Mulholland had moved away and was telling Elmer about the different kinds of stationery he travelled in: receipt books, account books, notepapers, occasion cards, mass cards, printed vouchers, printed invoices, envelopes of all descriptions. It wouldn’t be as bad as she thought, having to share the big bed; the things Letty said were silly. Elmer had stopped saying sir to the men; he kept nodding and wagging his head while he listened to Mr Mulholland. ‘Elmer Quarry’s always polite to you,’ her father had commented the Sunday evening after Elmer had told him he’d proposed marriage. A shopkeeper had to be, Letty had icily interjected. Politeness made money for shopkeepers.
‘I keep the books in Traynor’s,’ the bald man said. He didn’t reveal what Traynor’s was, but from subsequent remarks Mary Louise was left with the impression that it had to do with animal foodstuffs.
‘I see,’ she said.
Listening to Mr Mulholland, Elmer privately reflected that he’d never drunk so much whiskey in a single day. No drink was kept in the house, and never had been, but sometimes at the funeral of a customer he felt he should accept what he was offered, and on Christmas Eve Renehan from the hardware next door always came in about half-past four and invited him to walk down the street to Hogan’s lounge. He had a mineral then, while Renehan took gin and hot water. Renehan usually fell in with other men in Hogan’s, and Elmer left them to it. Counting the glass of whiskey after the wedding ceremony, he’d had three already that day, and he wondered what Rose and Matilda would say if they could see him standing in a bar with his young wife and three strangers. Probably they’d be too astonished to say anything.
‘I know what you mean,’ he acknowledged Mr Mulholland’s revelations concerning the necessity in any business for clearly printed up-market stationery. In a moment he’d buy a round himself, and then the grey-haired man would buy a round, and that would be that. Naturally you’d have a drink when you were on a holiday, naturally you wouldn’t behave the way you would if you were still at home. Sixty-six pounds it would cost at the Strand.
Elmer turned to the bar to order the drinks. He remembered going by the Fahys’ back-yard one time when the big double doors were open and seeing Mrs Fahy’s clothes hanging on the line with her husband’s. He’d stopped to look at them, fourteen or fifteen he’d been. Afterwards he’d thought about them, Mrs Fahy folding them after she’d taken them off, salmon-coloured some of the garments were. Remembering now, a jitter of excitement disturbed Elmer’s stomach, like a breeze passing through it. He turned to glance down at the calves of Mary Louise’s legs, but they were difficult to discern in the gloom. Sometimes he would glance out of the accounting-office window and see one of the counters spread over with suspender-belts and roll-ons, and some woman making up her mind, fingering the material or the elastic.
‘You did right well with this one,’ the bald man murmured out of the side of his mouth when Elmer gave him his drink. ‘A lovely girl, Mr Quarry.’
Elmer didn’t respond. He felt embarrassed by what had been said, although he wasn’t sure why. Mr Mulholland raised his glass and proposed a toast to the happy couple.
‘Was I out of turn?’ The bald man’s surreptitious murmur continued. ‘I think I forgot myself there.’
Elmer realized a compliment was intended. He denied that offence had been given with a dismissive shake of his head.
‘What’s the news, what’s the news, O my bold chevalier?’ sang the boys at the corner table. ‘With your long-barrelled gun of the sea…’
While listening to details of the book-keeping conventions at Traynor’s, it had occurred to Mary Louise that her husband might leave all the drink-buying to the men. Mean as an old crab, James had said he was. But if he had erred in that way, it would more likely have been because he didn’t know about correct behaviour in a public house since she had never, herself, detected signs of meanness in him. And anyway there he was, handing out glasses just like the others had.
‘Thanks, Elmer.’ She smiled at him when he gave her hers.
He wondered what she was wearing under the two-piece. For all he knew, it was stuff she’d bought from Rose or Matilda in the shop. It was his sisters who said you must call it a two-piece these days, not a costume any more, which was what their mother had called it. The first day he served behind the counter a woman had come in and asked to see stockings, thirty denier. She’d run her hand down into one, and ever since he had enjoyed watching a woman doing that.
‘I wouldn’t like to offend your lord and master,’ the bald man confided to Mary Louise. Bewildered, she frowned.
‘I said to him you were a lovely girl. A bridegroom could take a remark the like of that the wrong way.’
Mary Louise laughed, and soon afterwards they all left the bar. Mr Mulholland and the grey-haired man went in one direction; Elmer, Mary Louise and the bald man returned to the Strand Hotel. The landlady had removed the headscarf and the curlers from her hair, which now – henna-shaded – displayed evidence of her earlier attentions. The bald man shook hands with Elmer and Mary Louise in the hall. He took cocoa at night, he confided, pursuing the landlady to the inner depths of the hotel.
When he’d stepped out into the fresh air Elmer had been aware of a sensation of floating in his head. The houses across the street, one pink, the other blue, were vivid in the gathering gloom. The pavement kept slanting away from him as he walked on it, first one way, then the other. In the Strand Hotel he held the banister-rail firmly as he climbed the stairs.
Mary Louise went in search of the bathroom and lavatory. She, too, was experiencing a degree of disturbance, a general muzziness she did not find unpleasant. When she returned to the bedroom she found her husband sitting on the edge of the bed with his jacket off and his tie loosened. His eyes kept closing.
Mary Louise put her nightdress over her petticoat and then slipped off the petticoat and the rest of her underclothes, and her stockings. She didn’t like undressing even when it was only Letty in the room, unless the light was out or Letty averted her eyes. Letty was quite good about things like that. They both agreed without ever having talked about it.
Elmer tried to watch, but his efforts at concentration caused a visual confusion he had not experienced before. A second image of his bride floated out of the first, precisely the same outline, hands and head, the white nightdress picked up from the bed, the body bent, then turned away from him while some sort of groping took place, stockings in her hands. He wanted to tell her she was great, but when he tried to his voice wouldn’t work properly. In the hall, when the man had begun about his cocoa, he’d attempted to compliment the landlady on her jam, but the same thing had occurred. He’d tried to say he liked thick jam, but he couldn’t manage to get the words right.