It was because of that that Mary Louise, on a Sunday afternoon in mid-November, cycled again to her aunt’s house. She didn’t quite know what she would say when she arrived, nor what she’d find there. She wondered if she’d be particularly welcome.
In fact she was. Her aunt was in the garden, rooting out her finished runner beans. She wore gum boots and an old mackintosh coat. A fire was smouldering near where she worked.
‘Mary Louise!’
‘Am I interrupting you?’
‘No, no, you’re not. I’m on the last row.’
She pulled out what remained of the row and threw the stalks on to the bonfire. A job she hated, she said, leading the way to the back of the house.
‘I’ve wondered,’ Mary Louise began in the kitchen.
‘Oh, I’m managing all right.’
In the kitchen Mary Louise made tea while her aunt pulled off her boots and hung her mackintosh above the Esse to dry.
‘It’s good of you to come over, Mary Louise.’
‘I was never able to offer you my sympathy.’ She paused, pouring the boiling water into the pot. ‘I needed it all for myself.’
‘Nothing in the world is a greater consolation than that you and Robert were friends those last few months.’
‘I was very fond of Robert, Aunt Emmeline.’
Her aunt had moved to the sink to wash her hands. She ran the taps, scouring her palms and fingers with a brush. Mary Louise poured their two cups of tea.
‘Robert was fond of you too, Mary Louise.’
That was all that was said. The depth of the relationship had clearly not been guessed by her aunt. Nothing about it had worried her in her son’s lifetime. She had seen no reason why a harmless affection should not be permitted in a life that was emotionally deprived.
‘There’s a cake your mother sent over. Your mother has been nice to me.’
An uncut fruitcake was placed on a plate. Mary Louise had hoped she could confide her feelings, that her aunt would understand and listen. But instead she cut slices of the fruitcake, and Mary Louise sensed that the subject should not be pursued. That she and Robert had been fond of each other was one thing; condoning love was quite another.
‘Whenever you feel like it,’ her aunt said, ‘come over and see me.’
The invitation softened what might have seemed like harshness, but being in the house again was painful and Mary Louise knew she would not easily return. The abandoned graveyard and the ruined church through which the rose rambled in high summer were easier places. They were without distractions or voices that did not belong; they did not demand politeness.
‘Might I have a drawing of Robert’s, d’you think?’
‘Oh, of course. Let’s go and see.’
The three books were open on the table, as he had placed them. The French and German battalions were engaged in a conflict he must have arranged after she’d left. The room had been tidied a bit, but not much.
‘I’m getting round to it,’ her aunt said, her tone betraying her failure to find the heart for the task. ‘I don’t come in here much.’
Mary Louise wouldn’t have changed the position of a single thing, not a book or a scribble or a drawing. She wouldn’t have moved by an inch his armchair by the fire. In winter she’d have lit the fire again and kept it going every day.
‘It’s nice you want one,’ her aunt said when a drawing of winter trees had been chosen. ‘Have anything else you’d like.’
Mary Louise looked about her, and the urge not to disturb returned.
‘Maybe these,’ she reluctantly suggested, indicating the three books.
‘Of course you must have them.’
They left the room and in the kitchen had another cup of tea. For a moment they did not speak. Then her aunt said:
‘Your mother said I could live at Culleen. What would you think of that, Mary Louise?’
Her Sunday visits to this house would become known was what Mary Louise thought: daily contact would see to that. But what had mattered in his lifetime didn’t matter now. Even if her revelation of today led in time to the dawning of suspicion in her aunt’s mind, it wouldn’t matter. She only wished she had known, that last Sunday, that she loved her cousin with the passion death had made apparent.
‘It’s lonely for you here, Aunt Emmeline.’
‘Well, that’s what they believe. And yes, it is. Just now it is, though perhaps I’ll get used to it.’
‘It’s sensible.’
‘Yes, it’s sensible. If Letty marries Dennehy there’ll be that bedroom.’
The Bank of Ireland owned more of the house than she did, she added. Getting rid of it would be a weight off her mind. The west side of the roof leaked, gutters needed to be replaced, lead was perforated.
‘I’m fond of James,’ she said. ‘It would be nice to see something of a young person again.’
Mary Louise could discern what was in her aunt’s mind, and in her parents’. The notion there had been – accepted almost as fact in the farmhouse – that Letty and James would see their way into old age together, now that Mary Louise had married, no longer appeared to be valid. More likely, now, it seemed that Letty would marry the vet and James would one day marry also. With a bedroom to spare, in such circumstances it was the natural thing to offer a home to a lone aunt.
‘But I’m not sure, Mary Louise. I’m not sure I wouldn’t be an intrusion.’
Mary Louise shook her head. That was the last thing her aunt would be, she reassured her. If the idea had been put to her the whole family would have discussed it. Her father would have agreed, and so would James. Letty must have made up her mind about Dennehy.
‘Privately between us, I believe she has,’ her aunt said.
‘I didn’t know.’
‘It’s always kept quiet for a while, news of a mixed marriage. Dennehy’s priest will be having a go at Letty.’
‘Letty would never turn.’
‘The priest’ll want the children though.’
Mary Louise felt that none of it concerned her. In the past Letty would have ages ago told her everything. They would have lain awake in the bedroom that soon was to be empty and Letty would have gone through every development in her romance, the nature and circumstances of the proposal, and the persuasion of the parish priest. When Gargan had been taking her out she’d come back to the bedroom at night with all sorts of information, often waking Mary Louise up to tell her: what Gargan had tried on, what he’d confided to her about his boyhood desires, revelations made about the customers at the bank, who was solvent and who was not. Now, apparently, her sister was going to marry a man Mary Louise had only spoken to once or twice and about whom Letty had told her nothing whatsoever. After the wedding everything in the farmhouse would be different – Aunt Emmeline would occupy the bedroom that had been theirs, James might marry the Eddery girl or someone like her. None of it was any longer Mary Louise’s world. Her world was the drapery and the house above it, her sisters-in-law, her husband, the attic rooms, the memory of her cousin’s love. The town she had so longed to live in was hers, its air odorous with turf smoke, its people interested in her seemingly barren state.
‘The priests always have a go for the children,’ her aunt said. ‘Well, understandably, I dare say.’
‘I must get back.’ She hesitated. ‘I don’t suppose there’s a photograph to spare of Robert?’
For the first time her aunt appeared surprised. Then she went away and returned with an album in which a dozen or so photographs were loosely caught between the pages. None was pasted in. ‘The ones of Robert are precious to me,’ she said. ‘There’s none of him grown up.’