The telephone in Letty’s house – a necessity for her husband in his professional life – was something of a novelty for her. There wasn’t one at Culleen, and rarely in the past had she had occasion to use one. But there the instrument was, on a shelf at the back of the hall, with a pencil and notebook hanging from a hook above it, and the directory on a shelf beneath. One morning, bored with sewing, she telephoned Quarry’s drapery, to remind Mary Louise that she had not yet visited her as she’d promised.
‘Yes?’ Rose said.
‘Could I speak to Mary Louise, please?’
Who’s that?’
‘It’s her sister.’
Letty heard Rose’s breathing, and faintly in the background the sound of the bell at the shop door.
‘It’s Letty,’ Letty said.
‘Oh, yes.’ It annoyed Rose that she’d had to climb the stairs to the accounting office because Elmer wasn’t there, only to discover that she’d been summoned on behalf of her sister-in-law. It particularly annoyed her that it should be Letty, since the matter of the wedding invitation still rankled.
‘Is Mary Louise around?’
Rose hesitated. She wasn’t in a hurry to give any information about Mary Louise’s whereabouts, feeling she needed time to think. At length she said:
‘Your sister isn’t.’
‘Is that Rose? Or Matilda?’
‘It’s Rose Quarry speaking.’
‘Would you ask Mary Louise if she’d phone me? Two four five.’
Rose thought she’d say yes and then omit to do so. But on an impulse she changed her mind. She said:
‘We hardly ever lay eyes on your sister these days.’
‘Is Mary Louise all right?’
‘I’d say she wasn’t. You could inform your parents things have progressed from bad to worse. We’re beside ourselves, the state she’s in.’
‘State? What state, Rose?’
‘You have to keep everything locked up. We have our handbags under lock and key the entire time. She broke into the safe in the office.’
To Rose’s considerable satisfaction, there was a silence at the other end. It continued for several moments, before Letty said:
‘What’re you talking about, Rose?’
‘We’d be obliged if you’d keep it in the family, Mrs Dennehy.’
With that, Rose returned the receiver to its hook. Elmer had specifically requested that the matter of the money taken from the safe should not be mentioned outside the house, but until the Dallons were aware of the extent of the girl’s contrariness they apparently wouldn’t act in any way whatsoever. Rose returned to the shop and reported the conversation to Matilda, who said she’d done the right thing.
Elmer shook his head. There weren’t any rats in the house. A cat that hung about the yard saw to all that kind of thing. A few mice now and again that his sisters caught in traps were the height of any trouble.
‘I sold her Rodenkil,’ Renehan said. ‘I believe she mentioned the attics.’
Elmer vaguely nodded, the gesture implying that he’d forgotten about the attics: privately he doubted that there were rats in the attics any more than anywhere else.
Renehan finished his drink and left Hogan’s bar. Elmer was still on his own when Letty and her husband entered it a quarter of an hour later. Behind the bar Gerry was reading the Evening Herald. No one else was present.
‘Elmer,’ Letty said.
‘I had a bit of business here,’ he began.
‘We want to talk about Mary Louise.’
Dennehy said he’d get the drinks. Letty led the way to a table in a corner. ‘And whatever Mr Quarry’s having,’ Elmer heard Dennehy ordering. At the same time his sister-in-law said:
‘We wanted to catch you on your own, Elmer. I’ve left messages for Mary Louise only she doesn’t ring me back.’
‘I’ll tell her –’
‘Rose said something about a safe.’
‘That’s a private matter, actually.’
‘What’s Rose talking about, Elmer?’
Elmer explained what had occurred was that Mary Louise, in a hurry for some money one day, had borrowed a sum from the safe in the accounting office. It was nothing, he said. A storm in a tea-cup.
‘Rose said they have to keep their handbags under lock and key.
To Elmer’s relief, Dennehy arrived at that moment with the drinks. ‘Good luck!’ Dennehy said, raising his glass and then occupying himself with the lighting of a cigarette.
‘What’s the matter with Mary Louise, Elmer?’
‘Ah, she’s all right. Mary Louise likes to be on her own, and it’s a thing my sisters don’t understand. She likes to go out on her bicycle, and then again she likes to have an area of her own in the house. That’s all that’s in it. No more than that.’
‘Your sisters went out to Culleen a few months ago. They made certain statements about Mary Louise.’
‘What kind of statements?’
‘They said she was away in the head.’
Elmer gave a jump. He finished the liquid in his glass and signalled to Gerry to replenish it, as well as the two glasses of his companions. Noticing the gesture, Letty shook her head. Dennehy nodded.
‘I didn’t know that,’ Elmer said.
‘Didn’t you know they went out to Culleen?’
‘To tell you the truth, I didn’t.’
‘I haven’t seen Mary Louise since our wedding. There wasn’t much the matter with her then. Except, of course, she doesn’t have a lot to say for herself any more.’
‘We’ve all noticed that, Letty.’
‘She was always talkative in the past.’
There were no rats in the attics. If there were rats in the attics you’d hear them scampering about above your head. For all he knew, it was all over the town that she’d been buying rat poison.
‘My parents wanted her to see Dr Cormican,’ Letty said.
‘It would do no harm. A check-up wouldn’t hurt anyone.’
‘She said she wouldn’t.’
‘Let me have a word with her, Letty.’
‘I’m in every day. Tell her I’m waiting for her phone call.’
Abruptly, Letty stood up. She’d had only a sip or two of her drink. All the time they were talking, Elmer noticed, she hadn’t stopped frowning, a small pucker of worry at the top of her forehead.
‘I’ll be seeing you,’ he said loudly in case Gerry would think they weren’t on terms.
‘Come out to the house,’ Dennehy invited, hastily finishing his drink. Letty didn’t say anything.
Elmer returned to the bar and ordered a double measure of whiskey.
‘God, isn’t that shocking?’ Gerry remarked as he handed back some change, and for a moment Elmer thought he was referring to some aspect of the conversation that had taken place in the bar. But Gerry, one eye still on the Evening Herald, was drawing his attention to the murder of King Feisal of Iraq.
Not interested in this far-off violence, Elmer nevertheless deplored the event. All it amounted to, he was thinking, was more of their outrageousness. There’d been no call to go visiting the Dallons, and definitely no call to say his wife was mentally affected or to mention the money borrowed from the safe. The truth was that Mary Louise had settled down the way she wanted to settle down, which was what he’d been endeavouring to explain to the sister. She slept up in the attic now, no reason why she shouldn’t if that was what she wanted.
*
The chimney-sweep lit the first fire in the grate to make certain the chimney was drawing well. Mary Louise carried up coals and wood from the cellar. Her presence was unnecessary in the shop because customers were few; her serving there had been part of a general pretence, or so it seemed to her now. Days went by now during which she addressed neither her husband nor her sisters-in-law. Sleeping in the attic room, she no longer experienced feelings of shame when she first awoke in the mornings. In the kitchen she washed the dishes the household’s food had been eaten from. She continued to perform the other household chores she’d been allocated, but always took her meals on her own. Whenever she felt like it she rode away from the town on her bicycle, going to the graveyard mostly, sometimes walking in the fields near her aunt’s house. The house was empty now, though not yet sold.