‘I’m not upset,’ Mary Louise again assured her sister.
‘You’re different than you used to be.’
‘I’ll come out and see you when you’re settled down in the house.’
‘Yes, do,’ Letty urged, placing a hand on Mary Louise’s arm. ‘Anytime come out.’
Other voices had joined Baney Neligan’s now. A piano was being played; two girls had begun to dance. Men were crowded along the bar, talking and laughing. A uniformed garda, with his bicycle-clips still in place, searched through them to shake hands with Mr Dennehy. Two tinker children tried to enter the lounge-bar and were summarily ejected. Men she didn’t know put their arms round Letty’s waist or kissed her, saying it was their due. Mrs Dennehy went round the guests, announcing that there was a table laid out in the dining-room, down the passage next to the Ladies.
‘I remember him at the Christian Brothers’,’ Father Mannion informed Mr Dallon, referring to the bridegroom. ‘I used come in to give them a jaw. Your man sat at the end of a row.’ Mr Dallon said that was interesting, and Father Mannion added that those were great old days. ‘I better make the rounds,’ he said. ‘I have hands to shake myself.’
In an upstairs bedroom Mrs Dallon and her sister examined the wedding presents that were laid out on the candlewick cover of a bed and on the room’s dressing-table and on a larger table. There were plates and sheets, tablecloths, ashtrays, vases, cups and a teapot, an electric kettle, an electric iron, table-mats, more plates, cutlery, a salt and pepper set, a special kind of rolling-pin, a corkscrew, various kitchen implements, saucepans, a doormat, basins, bowls, jugs, baking dishes and a framed picture of the Virgin Mary, incorporating the Sacred Heart. This last offended Mrs Dallon. It had come from someone who was unaware of Letty’s religion, or else from someone who considered the reproduction a necessity in the household that was being set up. Letty wouldn’t hang it up, she’d surely put it behind something.
‘Ah, yes,’ Mrs Dennehy said hastily, noticing that Mrs Dallon’s attention had been caught by the picture. ‘That’s difficult certainly.’
‘Some lovely stuff here.’ Mrs Dallon was determined not to reveal her displeasure. There were bound to be awkwardnesses. There were areas that had to settle down in any mixed marriage, no good pretending.
‘Well, aren’t people generous, Mrs Dallon? When you come to the crunch of it you’ll find they’re generous.’
Other women entered the bedroom, Mrs Dallon and her sister left it. On a corner shelf on the landing there was a statue of a saint and downstairs there was a picture like the one Letty had been given, with a red light flickering below it. All of a sudden Mrs Dallon found herself wondering whom James would marry.
‘Doesn’t the green suit Letty?’ Angela Eddery came close to Mary Louise to voice her admiration. She had a way of doing that, of speaking in hushed, reverential tones with her packed, pressed-out teeth a few inches from the face of the person she addressed. Her breath was warm.
‘Does it suit myself, Mary Louise? It suits Letty all right, but I wondered about myself?’
‘Mary Louise,’ another voice said, upbraiding her. ‘You didn’t give that invitation to Rose and Matilda. Why didn’t you, pet?’
She did her best to explain. Her mother said if there ever was anything that upset her she should bring the worry out to Culleen. That was what home was for.
‘Of course it is, pet,’ her mother pressed, even though Mary Louise hadn’t sought to deny this opinion. Somewhere in the crowd, a little earlier, she had glimpsed the wrinkled features of Miss Mullover. The old schoolteacher was someone she could tell, someone who wouldn’t be upset, as her father would have been.
‘I haven’t seen you for ages, Mary Louise.’ Her aunt’s weather-chapped face was there also. Whatever she’d chosen to drink had caused it to redden even further. ‘Are you keeping well these days?’
‘Yes, I am. What’ll become of the soldiers when you sell the house? And the books and things?’
There was a pause. Then her aunt said:
‘There’ll be an auction. Your father thought an auction was best.’
Mary Louise wondered about Robert’s clothes. A dead person’s clothes were sometimes given to charity, unless they were sold because money was short. You wouldn’t auction clothes; she’d never heard of that.
‘What’ll happen to his watch?’
‘I’ll keep his watch, dear.’
Her aunt smiled at Mary Louise as she spoke. When would the auction be? Mary Louise asked, and her aunt said the second of May, all being well.
‘Will you give away his clothes?’
The question appeared to cause consternation. Her mother asked Mary Louise to repeat it, which she did.
‘There’s a family in need,’ her aunt said eventually, ‘due to the father being out of work.’.
Pressed further by Mary Louise, she added:
‘That dingy blue-washed cottage on the Clonmel road.’
Responding to Mrs Dennehy’s invitation, some of the guests had visited the dining-room and were now sitting at the tables in the bar, eating from cardboard plates. Miss Mullover, with modest portions of tongue and salad, saw Mary Louise on her own and waved across the room at her. The rumours about Elmer Quarry were true, she’d been thinking only a moment before. She’d seen for herself this afternoon: his eyes bleary, the lids inclined to droop. Like a sack of something, she’d thought, slouched against the counter of the bar.
‘Hullo, Mary Louise.’
Every time she met her, the girl seemed more reticent. You had to prise responses out of her now. ‘This tongue’s good,’ she said, but the recommendation elicited no comment whatsoever. Then, as if reading those thoughts, Mary Louise answered a polite query about her husband’s well-being by suddenly becoming garrulous. Elmer was a harmless man, she said; he meant no ill-will. He had never struck anyone in his life; he never got into a rage; he never shouted; in all sorts of ways he didn’t bother her.
‘D’you remember, Miss Mullover, how my cousin always finished his transcription first? He used to scribble on the inside of his jotter cover. My cousin Robert?’
Miss Mullover, surprised, failed to remember that.
‘We were in love you know, my cousin Robert and I. In your schoolroom we were in love. We still were when he died. We’ve always belonged to one another.’
Elmer and Bleheen were interrupted at the bar. Mary Louise was suggesting they should go home.
‘Home’s where the heart is,’ Elmer said, remembering the expression suddenly, something his mother used to say. He lowered his voice. He’d had the whole thing explained, he said: an invitation had been issued but it had never reached the house. He was to carry her mother’s apologies back to Rose and Matilda.
‘Can we go now, Elmer?’
‘We’ll take a quick one for the road in that case,’ Bleheen said, raising his empty glass for attention.
‘Five minutes, dear,’ Elmer put in, ‘while Mr Bleheen charges his batteries.’
The remark was not made humorously but even so the artificial-inseminator laughed. ‘The three of us’ll charge our batteries,’ he declared. ‘What’ll you take yourself, dear?’
‘No, I’m all right, Mr Bleheen.’
Mrs Dennehy appeared at her side, reminding her about the display of wedding presents upstairs. ‘Your mother’s been up, along with your aunt. Wouldn’t you slip up yourself?’
‘Go up and enjoy yourself dear,’ Elmer urged; but Mary Louise said they’d better be getting back. She’d ask her mother to describe the wedding presents when she saw her next.
‘Well, wasn’t it a great send-off for your sister?’ Bleheen said in the car. ‘Not a ha’penny spared.’
Elmer, beside him in the front, agreed. The time by the dashboard clock was five past five. As soon as they heard the key in the lock they’d be out on the landing, waiting, the way they’d taken to doing. They’d start in at once about the house smelling like a distillery, as though any normal person could go out to a party and not return bringing traces of festivity with him. Mary Louise would walk past them, different from the way she used to be, not timid in their presence any more. What he’d do would be to stay where he was for a few minutes in the hall, and then walk into the accounting office. After ten minutes or so he’d slip down to Hogan’s.