‘I don’t think I’d have been much good at anything noisier.’
She smiled in turn, not knowing whether to deny that, deciding not to. He said:
‘I used to want to be an auctioneer when I was at Miss Mullover’s. I fancied myself shouting the odds. Can you believe it? I really did.’
‘I can’t see you an auctioneer, Robert.’
‘Useless I’d have been.’
‘I wanted to work in Dodd’s. It seemed like paradise.’
‘You got the next best thing.’
‘I thought of Quarry’s too.’
‘And is it paradise, Mary Louise?’
‘Oh, all that was just a childish thing.’
He laughed, still watching her. His eyes were brown, but very dark, nearly black when they lost their luminosity. His glasses, tortoiseshell-rimmed, perfectly round, suited him.
‘Come and look at another childish thing,’ he said.
He pushed himself out of his armchair and led her to the table in the window where the soldiers were displayed. It was the double battle of the Aisne and Champagne, he said.
‘General Nivelle’s plan was to break through the German line between Vailly and Reims. This cluster of German armies was under the command of the Crown Prince himself.’
He pointed to where the German line had held, between Vendresse and La Ville aux Bois. Elsewhere it had been pushed firmly back. Mary Louise wondered which war was being fought, and for what purpose.
‘The Germans mustered a good counter-attack, but even so the French pressed on, breaking through the Chemin des Dames.’
Arrows with neatly printed names indicated all that. Some of the soldiers were lying down. These were the dead, he said.
She plucked up courage. ‘Which war was this?’
‘The one before last. The double battle took place in the spring of 1917.’
She followed him back to the fire. She began to say again that she must go, but already he was explaining that if the Russians hadn’t been preoccupied with their revolution it would have been a different story. She wanted to tell him that in Miss Mullover’s history lessons she’d been fascinated by Jeanne d’Arc. Shyness held her back again.
‘In the end it was the Germans who emerged victorious from the Aisne and Champagne encounter. I’m sorry: this is boring.’
‘No. No, it isn’t.’
‘I was explaining how I spend the day because you asked. I play with soldiers. And read. I read a very great deal.’
Mary Louise was not much of a one for reading herself. As well as Picturegoer, Letty bought Model Housekeeping, and there used to be the Girl’s Friend years ago, when she and Letty were younger. In the farmhouse there was a bookcase on the landing. Mary Louise had read The Garden of Allah and Greenery Street; at school they’d read Lorna Doone. She had never even looked at the titles of the books in the attics of the Quarrys’ house.
‘When it isn’t winter,’ her cousin said, ‘I do things in the vegetable beds. Sometimes I wander down to the stream. There’s a heron on that stream.’
‘I’ve never seen a heron.’
‘You could see one here, Mary Louise.’
He smiled again, and all of a sudden she wanted him to know that once she’d thought herself to be in love with him. She didn’t know why she had that urge, and of course it couldn’t be realized. But she thought it would be nice if he knew that being an invalid didn’t make him pathetic. He probably did know, she thought then: he seemed extraordinarily happy with the limited life he led.
‘It’s been nice seeing you again,’ was what she said, and before she left the room she promised to return.
‘It would be good of you,’ his mother said in the kitchen. ‘You’ve no idea how much your visit delighted him.’
Mary Louise wanted it to be a secret. She didn’t want it known at Culleen, and certainly not in the Quarrys’ house, that she had spent an hour with her invalid cousin. She almost asked her aunt if they might keep this afternoon as something among the three of them, but she could not find the words. Then it occurred to her that her mother and her aunt were nowadays not often in touch; sometimes a whole year went by. And since her aunt no longer shopped in the town there seemed little likelihood of anything slipping out in conversation there.
As she rode swiftly on the grassy avenue, she tried to remember what being in love with her cousin had felt like. Had it really been much the same, less potent even, than her feelings for the cinema images of James Stewart? For almost twelve years, since she was twelve herself, she had not devoted more than an ordinary, passing thought to the boy who’d been unable to go on attending school, even though he’d been driven in a car. Unfortunate, she had considered him, leaving it at that.
That Sunday evening it was easier in the dining-room when Mary Louise took her usual place between her husband and Matilda. Elmer helped himself to the egg salad Rose had prepared, asking questions about the farm, and vaguely responding to the answers.
‘I hear your sister’s chummed up with Dennehy,’ Matilda said.
‘I think so.’
‘Funny, that.’
The silence that usually followed this favourite comment of Matilda’s did so again. Elmer said eventually:
‘Is that the vet from Ennistane crossroads?’
Rose affirmed this. Dennehy’s father was the publican at Ennistane, she added.
‘Does your mother mind?’ Matilda asked.
‘Mind?’
‘A person like Dennehy.’
‘She didn’t say she minded.’
‘RC of course?’ Elmer always cut lettuce and tomato up very fine, and mashed a hard-boiled egg. Having done so now, he reached out for salad cream.
‘Oh, yes,’ Rose said.
‘They’re not without means, the Dennehys.’ Matilda nodded more than once, to lend significance to this. ‘Perhaps there’s that.’
She spoke lightly, as if she sought to rid her statement of its implication, or to suggest that if the words were examined carefully it would be found that, in spite of the emphasis of her nodding, nothing much was being suggested. Carefully, she scraped butter on to a slice of soda bread. Tidily, she cut the slice in half and then in half again.
‘Even so,’ Rose took up the theme, ‘I’d have thought Mrs Dallon would be concerned.’
Mary Louise looked away. She half-closed her eyes and saw the soldiers on the table, the little printed arrows, the line of cannon. The uniforms were exactly as they’d been in reality, her cousin had explained, every detail right. She wondered where they’d come from. In a poverty-stricken household the wealth of colour seemed quite out of place.
‘Rough,’ Rose said, the word appearing to be thrown out at random, attached to nothing.
Matilda nodded, and again there was a silence. Elmer passed his cup for more tea. Rose poured it. Matilda added milk.
She would go again next Sunday. She would spend no more than ten minutes at Culleen and then ride quickly on. This time she’d find the courage to ask her aunt if it could be a secret. She’d give a reason, she’d think of something during the week.
‘We need to order gimp,’ Elmer was saying. ‘And ticking.’
On Sundays he went through the stock. He had a method, he’d told Mary Louise on one of their pre-marriage walks. Every Sunday morning he took a different line and checked the supply in stock: haberdashery one week, velvets and velveteens the next, chintzes, satins and silks, then hats and dresses, then overcoats, suits, all menswear, socks and braces. On Sunday evenings he went through the books, minutely comparing the entries with last week’s. It wasn’t necessary, any more than it was necessary to keep a record of the particular garments that were repeatedly rejected when sent out on approval. But all this kind of thing interested him. All this was part of trading.
‘I bet a shilling he’ll be in this week,’ Matilda said, referring to the traveller from whom gimp and ticking were ordered. ‘He’s due since February.’