In their bedroom he stood with his trousers off, knowing what she meant and pretending not to. The conversation they were having was ridiculous. He’d categorically told her, ages ago, before they were even married, that he never bothered going to the YMCA billiard-room in the summer because what was attractive there was the winter cosiness of the fire, and the curtains drawn. He had described the curtains, heavy brown brocade purchased in Quarry’s in his father’s time.
‘You sometimes have a smell of drink on you,’ she said.
He wagged his head. This was a way of his when he was at a loss, a response that could have meant anything. He whistled soundlessly.
Mary Louise sighed. It didn’t matter; she didn’t care. She had no interest in his spending time in the billiard-room or spending it elsewhere. But something had to be said occasionally, else there would be only silence between them. The smell of drink was a smell like any other; all she was doing was making a comment.
He yawned, drawing his pyjamas on. There were good things about him, she reflected, even more good things than she’d been aware of when she married him. He was a little mean in some ways but not in others. She’d seen him taking a lump of coal off the fire, but she could have what she wanted from the shop, and he gave her money for other necessities – a little stack of notes and coins on the first day of every month: he never forgot. If she’d complained about the rudeness of his sisters he might even have spoken to them.
‘Good-night, dear,’ he said, and she reached to turn the light off, as she did every night, because the switch was closer to her.
‘Good-night, Elmer.’
Almost at once he slept. His breathing, soft at first, became deeper, then stertorous. She moved her limbs towards his. Her hands lay lightly on his sleeping body.
13
The women talk of different times. For the years they have known one another they have marked out in their conversations certain periods they favour. Just as Mary Louise claims 1957, so Mrs Leavy of Youghal returns regularly to her infancy in 1921 and ‘22, Dot Sterne to 1984, Belle D to the advent of the Beatles, the Spanish wife to destitution in Gibraltar, 1986. Others have more precisely held to themselves days or moments or occasions, the hour of a tragedy or an act of violence.
People are claimed also, special and belonging, the personal baggage of the house’s inmates. To a conversation that is endlessly renewed Mary Louise contributes the people of Culleen and of the town, her cousin and her aunt, her husband and his sisters. In turn she hears about people she does not know. Every day the house is thronged, the crowds impenetrable sometimes.
‘God knows, it’s nothing new,’ the faded woman who is usually silent alleges in a quieter conversation. It’s nothing new, reflection has revealed to her, that mad women should walk the roads and streets of Ireland. Once upon a time they did, in the old times, before the great brick asylums were built, before each town possessed a barracks for hiding the insane in.
‘What’s she talking about?’ Bríd Beamish, wearing lipstick, asks.
‘Loonies on the loose is what.’ Dot Sterne has rolled her stockings down, hoping Miss Foye will notice and not put her back where she came from.
‘Oh, of course,’ Mrs Leavy agrees. ‘We all knew the brickwork asylums. Many’s the time me and Elsie looked over the wall.’
‘I’m saying the time before the asylums were in existence,’ the faded woman corrects her. ‘I’m saying long ago.’
‘Loonies on the loose,’ Belle D repeats.
‘Crazies,’ a woman who was a priest’s housekeeper adds. ‘The brain in tatters.’
‘It’s a different kettle of fish now,’ Mrs Leavy reminds them. ‘The days of the old crazies is over. We don’t use them expressions no more. This day and age, the nurse told me.’
‘Swallow your medication.’ Small Sadie’s laughter cackles. ‘Right eejits if you don’t swallow the medication.’
‘There’s some would never have set foot in this place if the drugs had been to hand. A bottle of medicine would have kept them well.’ Mrs Leavy has taken the lead. She has placed herself at the head of the inmates who are soon to be released. She is stating their case. She is offering the medical evidence as she had it personally from Miss Foye and a doctor, the bald one, not the one with the beard.
‘Mary Louise should never be setting a foot out of it,’ Small Sadie snaps back. ‘Heathen bloody strumpet.’
She cries as soon as she has spoken, putting her arms around Mary Louise and saying she’s sorry.
14
It seemed natural that her cousin should become Mary Louise’s confidant. In September 1957, two years after her wedding, she told him the details of the courtship there’d been, of the proposal on the humped bridge, of her request for time to think it over, of the engagement and the journey on the wedding day by train and bus, and the arrival at the Strand Hotel.
They had seen, in June, the rose blooming wildly through the tiny derelict church. They had returned repeatedly to the stream, in search of the heron. But Mary Louise’s confidences were offered in the graveyard, among the Attridge headstones.
‘And what were you thinking?’ Robert, fascinated, would interrupt, leading her back to some point that interested him particularly. What had her thoughts been when she sat beside Elmer Quarry for the very first time, during The Flame and the Flesh? Or when she stood in front of the altar? Or when the red-cheeked Reverend Harrington pronounced them man and wife?
She shared with him her emotions during the first few moments in the Strand Hotel, when she experienced misgivings that had not been there before, when her husband said that the place seemed comfortable enough. She described how, in the dining-room, the landlady had indicated a table where three men were already eating. She took him on the walk by the sea, the children collecting shellfish, the dog chasing the seagulls. She led him to McBirney’s bar, told about the cherry brandies she’d drunk, about how Mr Mulholland had called her Kitty, how the bald man had said he had a Woolworth’s bladder.
She’d been drunk in the end, she confessed, and Elmer had been too drunk to take his clothes off. When they’d woken up in the morning they’d both felt terrible. They’d gone for another walk along the strand, during which Elmer said they didn’t feel so hot because they weren’t used to drink. She recalled the remainder of the honeymoon, the same kind of conversations in the dining-room as there’d been in McBirney’s bar on their wedding night. Mr Mulholland said goodbye on the Sunday morning, announcing that it was his due to kiss the bride. After breakfast every day Elmer sat outside the hotel and read the Irish Times from cover to cover while she accompanied to the strand one of the families who were staying at the hotel. She played with the children, helping them to make sandcastles. She bought a bathing-dress and bathed. On the Wednesday the bald man showed them round the animal-foodstuffs place where he worked. On Thursday they watched swing-boats being erected. On Friday they came back.
‘Why did you get married, Mary Louise?’
‘No one knows a thing like that.’
He shook his head. He said that, looking back, people knew.
‘I thought it would be all right. I thought no one else would marry me. I wanted to be in the town.’
‘My God!’
He reached for her hand and held it. He raised it to his cheek. She shouldn’t have told him, she thought, yet in the same moment she knew it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter being here, or letting him take her hand. How could it matter?
‘Tell me anything you want to,’ he urged, and listened, her hand still held.