Mary Louise wondered if there’d be a different battle on the table the next time. Would there be two different sides, the uniforms different, the words on the arrows printed in a different language? She imagined her cousin in the vegetable garden that kept his mother and him going. She saw him bent over a bed in the sunshine, weeding between rows of lettuce. How strange his solitary life must be! And how strange for her aunt to have married money that was not there! Was what they implied about Letty true? Was she going out with the vet in the same way as she herself had gone out with Elmer Quarry? Would Letty marry him and sometimes in the night reach out for him, seeking his physical warmth? Or would all that be a different kind of thing for Letty?
‘There’s a couple of those travellers getting slack,’ Elmer said.
She and her cousin had nothing in common; pushed away into a corner, this realization had remained there ever since he’d talked about the battle in France. Reading was what he liked; sometimes when he said something she didn’t understand it. He’d be bored if she kept turning up on Sundays; you could see he liked to be alone in spite of what his mother said.
‘Surprising your mother could accept Dennehy’s roughness,’ Rose said. ‘Surprising, that.’
11
In time all those who can understand realize that nowadays things are being ordered differently. The three doctors who regularly visit the house talk in turn to those whom they believe would be better off in what they make a point of calling ‘the community’. Where there is no family, or if a family does not wish to cooperate, places will be found in sheltered accommodation.
‘Is it community singing?’ Belle D inquires. ‘Is that what they mean?’ Her name is Belle Dymock, but for reasons of her own she has forbidden her surname’s use, while insisting also that her first name should not be employed on its own.
‘The community’s where you came from,’ the Spanish wife replies. Her surname, too, has caused difficulties, not because she dislikes it but because no one can pronounce it. She is not, in fact, Spanish herself, but has acquired her sobriquet through marrying a Spaniard who deserted her in Gibraltar.
‘Did you ever hear the like?’ another woman asks, a faded woman who speaks only when a subject catches her imagination.
‘It’s the tablets,’ Mrs Leavy explains. ‘Medication works wonders.’
They all say that. They say it and repeat it: the new drugs of the 1980s make the miracle possible. The doctor who cares for Belle D has told her she could easily work in the carpet factory again. Pretty Bríd Beamish – no fault of her own she took a wrong turning – will be adorned in wedding finery yet, no reason in the world why she shouldn’t be. All that must be ensured is that the medication is taken, daily and precisely as prescribed. The assistance of family members will be required, assurances insisted upon. ‘Isn’t it the best leave-taking you could have?’ jovially remarks the doctor who has a beard, smiling at the faces of the unsmiling. Father Malley sits with each departing inmate, recalling Our Lady and her mercy.
‘Mary Louise! Come here, Mary Louise!’ Small Sadie beckons, and questions when she is obeyed: ‘Will you go back to the graveyard, Mary Louise? Will you get up to your tricks?’ Laughter cackles from the tiny woman’s throat. In the house she is often likened to a hen because of that noise she makes.
‘What tricks are those, Sadie?’
But Sadie only shakes her head. At night she is locked away alone. She broke a gardener’s arm one time. She’s in the house because too often she believes she has to break things and tear off wallpaper. A week ago she was told she would remain in care for a while yet.
‘Sadie’s the lucky one!’ she cries in the same shrill way. ‘Poor old eejits, what good is it to you? What good the Holy Apostolic Church? What good the dogs in the traps? Dog eats dog, Thundering Joe and Flashby. Tinned with rabbit.’
‘Oh, hold your damn noise,’ a woman snaps.
12
He brought binoculars in case the heron was about. The soldiers had been his father’s, he said. There were just those she’d seen, French and German: the battles he could reconstruct were limited.
‘You’ve heard about the watch?’ He lifted it from his jacket pocket. They were standing on the shallow bank of the stream he’d spoken of. If Mary Louise kept watching she’d see tiny trout swimming by.
‘It’s a pretty watch.’ She had admired it without saying anything when she’d first noticed him snapping it open. It was slender, golden, its case engraved, the chain finer than was usual.
‘My father, you know.’ He laughed. ‘You have heard, haven’t you?’
‘People tell a story.’
‘It’s true. If he had remembered the soldiers were still in the house he’d have tried to sell them too. I wish I’d known him.’
He explained that at the time when he’d ceased to come to school it hadn’t been because he was weaker than usual, but because his mother couldn’t any longer spare the time to drive there and back twice a day. She couldn’t afford help in the vegetable garden they made their living from: every hour was precious.
‘She taught me in the evenings. Not that I know much.’
‘Actually, you seem to know a lot.’
‘Certain subjects we didn’t bother with at all. I can hardly count, for instance.’ He lifted the binoculars from around his neck and handed them to her. She focused them and searched the undergrowth, upstream and down. He took them from her, then shook his head.
‘We’re out of luck today.’
But at least they saw the trout going by, a couple at a time. You could catch them with a net, he said.
‘Poor little things. I wouldn’t want to.’
He laughed. He pushed the shock of hair back from his forehead, which was his most familiar gesture. The smaller the trout were, he said, the better they tasted. Then he said:
‘They’re an intimidating pair, aren’t they, your husband’s sisters?’
‘A bit, I suppose.’
‘You live in the same house as them?’
‘Oh, yes. Above the shop.’
‘I’m not so sure I’d entirely care for that.’
They walked back the way they’d come. He said:
‘At your wedding my mother and I were in the second pew. I kept wondering what you’d look like. You passed up the aisle with your father but I only saw your back.’
‘I turned round when the whole thing was over.’
‘You were Mrs Quarry then.’
‘Yes, I was.’
‘I hadn’t seen you before that for ages.’ He paused. ‘Actually, you were beautiful that day. If you want to know, that’s what I thought.’
The flush came into her face. She looked away.
‘To tell you the truth, I’ve always thought you were a beauty.’
‘A beauty! Oh, go away with you, Robert!’
‘I always thought that,’ he repeated evenly.
He didn’t look at her; he wasn’t watching her, as he had on the previous Sunday. He stooped to pick a dandelion.
‘But I’m not in the least –’
‘You are, Mary Louise.’
She wanted him to go on, to say it again, to go into detail. But about to speak, he hesitated and then was silent.
‘I’m not beautiful in the least.’
‘Doesn’t Elmer Quarry think you are?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Ask him and he’ll tell you. Of course he does.’
They were not walking in the direction of the house any more. He had veered off to the left, crossing the slope of a field.
‘Do you ever read Russian novels?’ he suddenly asked, disappointing her with this change of subject.
She shook her head.
‘I have a favourite Russian novelist,’ he said.