Part 17 (1/2)

'The first minute I have to spare we'll go out there. Myself and yourself.'

'It's the place where the Attridges are buried. The Attridge family.'

'I know it well.'

The desire to be away, to be in the bar at Hogan's, has developed into a soreness that spreads all over his body. That first time, the first occasion he visited her, he said: 'Well now, and how are you, dear?' She shook her head, referring to some beggarwoman with second sight. On later visits he told her the news from the town, how Foley's had been converted into a self-service, with wire baskets, how Sarsfield's in Lower Bridge Street was the first bar to have the television installed.

'I really want it,' she begs. 'It's the only thing I want.'

'No problem about the grave, dear.'

Once she was locked away it would be as though she had died. Her advent had been a destruction, and they imagined a fresh beginning for the three of them. But within ten months he was listening at last to Kilkenny's sales talk at the garage, and then he bought a car purely so that three or four times a year he could visit her. Not once have they sat in that car; not once have they seen, even in the distance, the house she went to. 'Come over for the drive,' he used to offer, but neither cared to reply.

They sit in the big front room, its grey wallpaper unchanged in their lifetime, a room their brother has not entered for almost thirty years. They manage their outrage at their sister-in-law's presence as best they can; they're too old now for the vigour of such feelings, Rose seventy-four, Matilda seventy-three. 'You d.a.m.n fool,' Rose said when first he told them she was to all intents and purposes cured due to wonder drugs. He repeated words that had been used to him, 'caring', and 'commitment' and 'community'. Ridiculous, it sounded, all that coming out of a grown man. He was finished years ago; until then they had used their energy protesting, in an endeavour to conserve what remained. What does it matter now? The shop has gone and with it their standing in the town. Often he does not wear a tie. They have seen him pa.s.s out of the halldoor in his old felt slippers. As if he's feeding a dog, he gathers up the remains and carries the tray up the attic stairs, or carelessly breaks the egg yolk when he fries it, not noticing the splinters of sh.e.l.l that fall into the fat.

'You d.a.m.n fool,' Rose says again, coldly stating the fact, her tone without the emotion that years ago would have made it shrill. She says it often.

'She has a brother and a sister,' Matilda reminds him, often also. 'It isn't here she belongs. Who says it's here?'

'She is my wife.'

These exchanges, and other pa.s.sages of conversation, are recalled in the grey front room, but are not dwelt upon in further conversation, are not mulled over aloud. Memories possess the two old women, further souring their bitterness. There are echoes of a time that might so easily and so naturally have continued: he'd been the person in their lives when it seemed clear that no one else was waiting to transform their lives. Making cakes for him, roasting meat, darning and mending, changing his sheets, the presents given and received on Christmas Day, he in the accounting office, they receiving in the shop: once, like a promise, there was the perpetuity of all that. Modest enough, G.o.d knows; not much to ask.

James at Culleen would like to hand the farm on to any of his sons but none of them wants it. James married Angela Eddery, and both are disappointed about this family rejection but do not let it show. There isn't a living at Culleen, each of their sons has said, which bewilders James because there always was before. 'Well, at least it'll see us out,' Angela reminds him, and they agree that that's a blessing to be grateful for.

Soon after Mary Louise's return Angela reports in the kitchen at Culleen that she has seen her in Bridge Street. She recognized her after an initial hesitation and would have spoken to her if there hadn't been that moment of doubt. By the time she gathered herself together her sister-in-law had pa.s.sed on.

'I suppose she'll have to come out here.' James sounds more grudging than he feels, the words too carelessly chosen.

'Of course she must, James! As often as she likes.'

Over the years Angela has had her ups and downs at Culleen. Often, when feeling low, she has thought of Mary Louise and seen her own life in perspective: she has been grateful for that. Once she and James visited his sister, but afterwards he said he didn't want to go again. James has always been embarra.s.sed by his sister's misfortune, and Angela is aware that this has probably been sensed by Mary Louise. She won't come out to Culleen, Angela intuitively guesses, and feels she could confidently rea.s.sure James on that score. She chooses not to.

When Dennehy inherited the premises at Ennistane crossroads he ceased to practise as a vet. He and Letty sold the house they'd had rebuilt at the time of their marriage and moved their family to the public house. Tired of being called out in the middle of the night to attend ailing animals, Dennehy took contentedly to the life of a publican and Letty enjoyed the more substantial income that the change brought with it.

'She should live with us,' she remarked when her sister's emergence from her sanctuary was first mooted. Dennehy raised no objection. The house was large, the bars busy: no matter how odd she was, another woman wouldn't be noticed about the place.

'She should have come here,' Letty repeats when Mary Louise has been back a while, and two days later she calls to see her sister in order, again, to put the proposition to her. 'There'll be a home with us,' she has earlier a.s.sured Miss Foye on her visits, and a.s.sured Mary Louise also. The big, noisy public house with all that coming and going, and a family of nephews and nieces, is surely more like it than the company of Elmer Quarry. Years ago Letty came to a private conclusion, shared only with her husband: Mary Louise had been maddened by the gross presence of Elmer Quarry in her bed, his demands had frightened and repelled her to a degree that in the end affected her mind. She could understand it, Letty maintained: you had only to imagine Elmer Quarry standing naked in your bedroom and you'd want to close your eyes for ever. Mary Louise has always been too innocent, too trusting and unworldly, to cope with any of that. Hair sprouted out of Elmer Quarry's ears, and out of his nostrils, black bristly hair that would sicken you when it came close. The sides of his face had a way of becoming damp with sweat, and that sweat would touch you. He took to drink because when it came down to it Mary Louise couldn't disguise her revulsion.

'Oh, I belong here,' Mary Louise insists. 'I'll visit you often.'

Like Angela, Letty knows she won't.

How could you have a grave up? How could you disturb the bones of the dead and for no good reason convey them five miles across the countryside to a graveyard that went out of business years ago? In the bar of Hogan's Hotel Elmer asks himself these questions, cogitating on their source. The cousin she spoke of had been an unfortunate with a delicate heart or lungs, never expected to live. A week ago she'd dragged her way through the long gra.s.s and pointed at a corner in the old graveyard where she and the cousin could go. She had it in her head that there'd been something between them.

'Replenish that, like a good man.' Elmer pushes his gla.s.s across the familiar surface of the bar, and Gerry receives it in an equally familiar grasp. He has a way of holding gla.s.ses these days, the fingers bent like claws due to arthritis.

'It's a fact what I was telling you, Mr Quarry. We have a one-way system threatened.'

'Are you serious?'

'Oh, I am, sir. They have the plans drawn up.'

'It'll damage trade.'

'Of course it will. Sure, you can't watch them.'

Elmer nods. The town is congested, no doubt about it, but a one-way traffic system will do more harm than good. He nods again, lending emphasis.

'Has she settled, sir?' the barman tentatively inquires a moment later.

'She has, Gerry. She's settled well.'

When he brings the trays up she talks to him about Russians. She has all the names off pat, no telling where she picked them up. A fortune it would cost, taking up remains, a whole long battle with the powers that be. Set stuff like that in motion and you wouldn't know where you'd end up. He was caught once through doing the decent thing; he was caught when they put it to him about the efficacy of the drugs, but if a woman who talks about Russians and opening up graves is back to normal it's a queer thing. The truth of it is they want them out of those places for economic reasons. He should have known that in the final a.n.a.lysis there's nothing that doesn't come down to pounds, s.h.i.+llings and pence.

'I saw her out walking a week back,' the barman chattily continues. 'Fit as a fiddle she looked.'

'Oh, game ball, Gerry, game ball.'

In mutual, unspoken agreement neither Elmer nor the Dallons have ever revealed the true facts about the purchasing of the rat poison. In the town it is generally believed that Elmer Quarry's wife was taken to the asylum because she couldn't be managed any more, which is true enough. At the time it went about the town that she played with toys and imagined rats were going to attack her. On several occasions she had attempted to administer poison to herself. She'd bought clothes from the poor when there was a shopful of clothes underneath where she lived.

'Well, that's great, sir.'

'It is of course, Gerry.'

He'd drive her out again tomorrow and get the bottoms of his trousers soaking wet in the gra.s.s. It annoys them to see him driving her out, especially since they don't know where the drive is heading. It's enjoyable sometimes to annoy them. 'Did you find out about a single gravestone?' she asked this morning, and he promised that the matter was well in hand.

When Elmer leaves the bar he does so by the door that opens on to the street, no longer pa.s.sing through the hall of the hotel, as once he used to. Bridget retired several years ago, but even before that Elmer hadn't bothered with loitering in the hall any more.

30.

Again she is the only one, a slight figure in the corner of the pew. Two colours black and brown are arranged, stylishly, in her coat, its fur collar turned up for warmth. They are repeated in her soft suede shoes. The first wrinkles of old age creep around her eyes and the corners of her mouth, but the beauty that only her cousin ever remarked upon has not yet deserted her. A madonna look, her cousin said to himself the night he died while dreaming of her.

'Amen,' she murmurs, thin fingers splayed on her forehead, eyes closed.

The clergyman who stands at the altar is tall, a young man still unmarried, not long the inheritor of five far-flung parishes. Every Sunday, from eight o'clock till nightfall, he makes the rounds of his spa.r.s.e attendances, spreading the Gospel over many miles, among the few. Often now this woman, until recently accounted mad, is the only occupant of these pews.

'Lighten our darkness...' he softly pleads. Shades of green and crimson, of blue and yellow, glow dully in the window behind him, scrolls looping, basketwork and swaddling clothes. No hymns are sung when she is the only one, the psalm is not intoned. Instead of a sermon the two converse. he softly pleads. Shades of green and crimson, of blue and yellow, glow dully in the window behind him, scrolls looping, basketwork and swaddling clothes. No hymns are sung when she is the only one, the psalm is not intoned. Instead of a sermon the two converse. 'The peace of G.o.d, which pa.s.seth all understanding...' 'The peace of G.o.d, which pa.s.seth all understanding...'

She remembers how in childhood, and when she was a girl, church services const.i.tuted an outing, how after her marriage they provided an opportunity to meet her family. She began to enjoy them for themselves during the years she was away.

'That was very nice,' she compliments the clergyman. 'Beautifully conducted.'