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‘ “That’s a special egg-cup, Mary Louise,” I said, not cross, just gently. I said it even though I’d told her before. “I’d rather you didn’t use it, Mary Louise,” I said.’

Mrs Dallon was about to say that anyone can forget a request like that, or confuse one egg-cup with another. She began to speak, but Rose shook her head before she’d said more than half a dozen words.

‘A week later I found it chipped on the rim. You couldn’t have it on the table now.’

‘It’s going up to the attic I’d worry about more,’ Mrs Dallon confessed. ‘And eating her food in the kitchen. Why does she do that?’

‘That’s the difficulty we have,’ Matilda said. ‘You wouldn’t know why she’d do anything. That’s why we’re sitting here.’

Mr Dallon asked how Elmer felt.

‘Elmer’s tormented by it,’ Rose replied. ‘You have only to look at the unfortunate man.’

Not here, any more than in the town, did they intend to mention that their brother had been driven to drink. With the girl gone from the house he’d be back to normal within a day, neither had the slightest doubt about that. He’d come and go as he had before the unfortunate entanglement, without bringing the odour of a distillery into the house every time he returned to it. A veil would be spread over the period of unpleasantness.

‘But what on earth d’you think is the matter with Mary Louise?’ Mrs Dallon agitatedly exclaimed. ‘What’s troubling her?’

‘That’s why we’re sitting here, Mrs Dallon,’ Matilda repeated. ‘In order to gain your assistance. We were wondering could it be mental?’

‘Mental?’

‘If you were in the house ten minutes with her the word would come into your head. Is it a normal thing for any person to spend three-quarters of the day in an attic?’

‘I thought it was just the evenings.’

‘The evenings is the main time. But sometimes you look round in the shop and she’s not to be seen. Well, you saw for yourself.’

‘Sundays too,’ Matilda put in. ‘An entire Sunday morning. Many’s the time.’

‘Another thing, she’ll go out on her bicycle on a Sunday after dinner and you’d worry in case she’s ridden into a bog or something. Nine and ten o’clock she’s not back.’

‘She comes over here on a Sunday, but she’s never as late as that.’

‘Nine or ten, isn’t it, Matilda?’

‘Oh, easily. With the long evenings she’s out till all hours.’

‘There was one night she didn’t come in at all.’

‘What?’ Just for an instant Mrs Dallon sounded hysterical. Her husband raised a hand, as though to calm her. ‘What?’ she said again, whispering now.

‘The day you called in she walked out of the house and didn’t come in till six o’clock the next morning.’

‘But where on earth was she?’

‘Matilda and I were all for going to the Guards. “She’s gone over to Culleen,” Elmer said.’

‘She wasn’t here.’

‘Well, there you are then. To tell you the truth, Mrs Dallon, we’re worried the entire time. The state she’s in she could end up anywhere on that cycle. You hear terrible things these days.’

‘We didn’t know any of this.’ Mr Dallon slowly shook his head, the skin of his face puckered with concern.

‘She’s riding wildly about the country, God knows where she goes. There was another time we had to make Elmer go out looking for her.’

Matilda didn’t add that they had watched Elmer going straight to Hogan’s, that he hadn’t returned until after ten, an hour after Mary Louise had returned herself. Neither sister revealed that Elmer had argued that it was up to his wife to decide if she wanted to go for a bicycle ride, and how long she should remain away. Rose said:

‘ “I wouldn’t have it,” she said to Mrs Riordan in the shop a week ago. “The wide lapels don’t suit you.” The woman had her money on the counter. You can’t run a shop like that. If Elmer knew the half of it he’d jump out of his skin.’

It was then that Matilda mentioned a place they’d heard of, an asylum for women who were mentally distressed. They hadn’t made inquiries; a person had mentioned it to them, which told a tale in itself.

‘Very well looked after,’ Rose said. ‘A garden to go into. The food’s second to none.’

‘My God!’ Aghast, Mrs Dallon stared at her visitors. The suggestion was horrible; the thought of it made her feel sick in the stomach. No matter how oddly Mary Louise was behaving, why should she be committed to an asylum?

‘Mary Louise is not mad,’ Mr Dallon protested. ‘That doesn’t come into it.’

‘It wasn’t me who thought of that place,’ Rose reminded him. ‘Another person was trying to help.’

‘She should definitely see Dr Cormican.’ He turned to his wife. ‘We’ll drive in and have a word with Cormican.’

The sisters, feeling themselves dismissed by this decision, rose immediately. But before they left Rose said:

‘Naturally, no one would want the poor girl confined in some place when she could be looked after by her own. We don’t want to leave without saying that.’

‘Her own?’

‘Her family we were thinking.’ Rose looked around the kitchen. ‘Where things are familiar to her.’

Apart from words of leave-taking, nothing further was said. Kilkelly’s car carried the sisters back to the town. The Dallons prepared themselves for an immediate visit to Dr Cormican.

More than most people, Bridget, the manageress of Hogan’s Hotel, knew everything that happened in the town. She had noted with interest during the last eighteen months the intensifying of Elmer Quarry’s addiction. It was a curious phenomenon, a considerable surprise that a Quarry should have come to err in this way, since the family was known for its longstanding tradition of sobriety. Bridget was also struck by a related habit Elmer Quarry had developed, that of leaving the bar by the door that led to the hall of the hotel and pausing there for a few minutes. She had observed him watching her through the glass partition of the reception desk, while pretending to admire the antlers on the wall at the bottom of the stairs or to consult the Irish Field calendar of the year’s events. If through curiosity she emerged, he remarked on the weather and asked her how she was. Then he said good-night and went away.

Well used in her professional capacity to the attentions of men, surreptitious or otherwise, Bridget knew she was not mistaken in her surmises about all this. The direct way out of the bar to the street was by the other door: there was no call for any drinker to make his way into the hotel. And there was a quality in Elmer Quarry’s mildly inebriated gaze that precluded any further doubt: when he was boozed up he wanted to take a gander at her. Bridget didn’t mind – if you minded stuff like that you might as well change into another business. But she wondered about the girl Elmer Quarry had married, a kid whom no time ago she remembered seeing on the streets with a school satchel. She’d heard it said it couldn’t be easy for the girl with two harridans breathing down her neck; even worse when Quarry had taken to the bottle and wasn’t averse to eyeing other women.

‘What d’you make of Quarry?’ She put the question to the barman one evening, joining him in the bar when he’d closed it for the night. She usually looked in at this time and had a medium sherry while Gerry finished the glass of stout that had lasted all evening.

‘He’s the better for it with a couple inside him.’ Experienced in such matters, Gerry was firm.

‘It came on him suddenly though. Time was he only took a mineral.’

‘ You’d notice it in the older type of bachelor.’ Gerry paused. He savoured another mouthful of stout, then slowly wiped a residue of foam from his upper lip. ‘The Quarrys marry to get a baby,’ he said.

‘I know they do.’