VII

… Oh do stop apologising for blots and lines being crooked and not knowing what to say. I just want you to say something. You were always the one who told me that the important thing was to say something, not to wait until I knew what to say, and thought it was right. I’ve started doing it. But you must continue to do it.

If you knew what it was like here. If you had even just a small idea, I think you would be so stunned that even you would be speechless. It’s very kind of you to write and say perhaps they’ll get over it, but it’s not like that. It’s not a bit like Uncle Sean and Auntie Eileen shouting at each other, because that was only for the evening at most. And anyway they always talked immediately afterwards, and then there was the whole family … there were all of you, and the house, and the shop, and everything. Here there’s nothing, there’s only the two of them, and they keep telling me I’m grownup.

I wish I wish so much I could have stayed in Kilgarret. Suppose I had got a job after school there, or helped Aunt Eileen with the accounts or in the house or something. Then they might have had to hold off until I came back. They could have said they couldn’t have done anything serious until I was home. But, you see, the awful thing is that they both say to me that I’m so sensible and I’m so understanding … but I don’t understand anything. I’m not grownup. I wish they could see that. Mr Elton keeps saying to me that he’d like me to call him Uncle Harry. I told him I was no relation and that, without wishing to be difficult, it was a bit artificial. That’s what I said.

He said, ‘You called those people in Ireland Uncle and Auntie and you’d never met them, and look at how well that worked out.’ I said to him that that was totally different, that I had gone to live with you, I was part of the family. I told him I lived there for over a third of my life. (I just worked it out.) And then Mr Elton said, ‘Well, Elizabeth, your mother and I hope you’ll live with us a lot of the time, even most of the time too, so don’t you think it’s a bit formal to have all this “Mr” business? I don’t call you Miss White, now, do I?’

I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing.

‘Right, that’s a good girl,’ he said. He thought I was considering it. But I feel that if I did call him Uncle Harry it would be letting Father down somehow. Giving in or something, letting Father see that the other side had won.

Father always calls him ‘Your-mother’s-friend-Mr-Elton’. She went to live in a boarding house. Well she calls it living there, but it’s so odd. She only pays a little because she helps the woman run the place. I went in there on Tuesday and she was in this awful room with all kinds of dirty sheets with a frightful smell and Mother was sorting them for the laundry. It really smelled foul. I said to Mother I couldn’t believe she was doing this, and she said that a woman had to have dignity, and that she couldn’t sit at home and wait for Father to make up his mind about the divorce, while eating his food and living in lodgings he had paid for; she had to make her own way.

I said, why didn’t she go and move in with Mr Elton if that’s what she was going to do eventually? She said it was to do with disgrace and reputation. I said that Monica’s mother knew all about it already and I hadn’t said anything to Monica. She said there were legal terms like reputation and disgrace which I didn’t understand.

Sometimes she talks as if her mind was gone, like poor Jemmy in the shop. But mainly she sounds like someone much younger than she is setting out on some kind of dangerous mission. I don’t blame Father for thinking it will blow over, but it won’t. Please write, I’ll go mad if I

 

make any more dreadful silent suppers for Father with nothing else to think about.

What does Aunt Eileen say?

Love,

Elizabeth

Dear Elizabeth,

I got your letter this morning. Mam gave it to me on my way downstairs. You won’t believe it but the postman still goes in to the kitchen to start messing with Peggy. I mean, they’re nearly a hundred, both of them, and he still thinks it’s great fun. Mam keeps a beady eye on them. Anyway, she said, why not take this stamped envelope, I’ve a bit of a note for Elizabeth myself in it. Mam must be like the fortune tellers, she couldn’t have known you said write back really quick.

I think you should call him Harry. Very suddenly. Cut out all the nonsense about Uncles and Misses, if they’re making out you’re so grownup, act grownup. That’s one thing.

Secondly, you’ll have to stop worrying about the two of them, they were never happy. Honestly, even when you were here you used to tell me about them going all cold and prickly with each other. It would have happened anyway. Dad was reading in the paper about half the English population getting separations and divorces because of the

war.

And another thing, its not even a sin for them. They were never properly married in a Catholic church or anything, so there’s nothing to be undoing or renting apart.

And if your mother is looking and acting all young, well, isn’t that great! Isn’t that what people are trying to do all the time? Whenever Mam says she feels like a girl again it’s always over something nice like a picnic or a run up a hill.

And, I know Mam said it in her letter because she didn’t seal it so I know I was allowed to read it, why don’t you come over here for a bit? We could chat about it, and it’ll be the holidays soon, and I’d love to know you were coming. It’s dead lonely here without you. I’m very friendly with Joannie of course, and she’s much nicer than we thought last year. But it’s not the same as when you were here, it’s not living with someone and being able to say anything you like.

What about your friend Monica (I still think it’s Niamh’s cat) ? Is she able to laugh like we did? I don’t think she can be, otherwise you’d have told her and her mother all about the business at home.

Listen, try to cheer up. I mean in a way they’re right. You are grownup. We’re sixteen and a bit, and if people aren’t grownup then when will they be?

Can you talk to your Da about other things? Like we do with Dad here when he starts complaining about things. No, I don’t suppose that’s really a good example. At least he doesn’t complain about Mam going off with another man. It’s kind of unbelievable.

But it must have been desperate. I’m very sorry. I’m not good at writing it, but it’s awful and I can’t find words to tell you how I wish and pray that it will somehow be all right.

In the meantime you should go right up to him and call him Harry. Be sure to tell me what he says.

Love, Aisling

Dear Aisling,

This is just a short letter. Calling him Harry was marvellous. He said ‘What?’ I said, ‘I said, no thank you, Harry.’ ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘You asked me not to be so formal,’ I said. ‘Quite correct my dear,’ he said. But he was knocked sideways. Then I called him Harry in front of Father, and Father laughed. He said I was right, that’s exactly what Mother’s-gentleman-friend was: a real Flash Harry.

Mother is pleased too. She says that she always knew I’d get round to liking him.

It’s the first day of holidays, I’m going to stay with Monica for a week. Aunt Eileen suggested that maybe they might find it easier to talk if I wasn’t there. She said that

 

there wasn’t much hope they’d get back together but they might be able to get formal things worked out if they didn’t have to keep looking at me. I think she’s right.

Monica has this awful boyfriend, well he’s sort of unsuitable but she’s delighted. I’m coming to stay because it means we can all go out together and her mother thinks she’s only going out with me.

Love to all of you. I’m sorry to hear from Auntie Eileen that Donal was worse, I hope he’s all right.

Love,

Elizabeth

Dear Elizabeth,

Donal’s fine again, he had extreme unction, do you remember what that was? Anointing the hands and feet with holy oil, you only do it when people are dying. But he turned a corner. Sometimes it cures people. It cured Donal, he’s fine, he’s sitting up again and laughing. He has a fire in his room even though it’s July.

Joannie has a boyfriend too, he’s David Gray, one of the Grays, a Protestant. He’s super-looking, but nobody’s meant to know. He writes her notes and says he thinks he’ll be able to take us both to Wexford next week in his cousin’s car. Wexford! In a car! With the Grays!

Aren’t you sorry you didn’t come to stay with us instead of with Monica down the road? Why didn’t you come by the way? Love, Aisling

When Elizabeth came back to the house in Clarence Gardens after her week with Monica, the first thing she noticed was how dirty it had become. All around the little rubbish pail in the kitchen there were bits of food, and the cooker was stained and crusted with old food that had been allowed to burn into the enamel. There was a smell of sour milk. The ashes in the sitting room had not been cleared and there was a trail of dirt around the front of the fireplace as if they had been very carelessly cleared on a previous occasion. The linen basket in the bathroom was open and clothes tumbled out on the floor. There was a sour smell in the bathroom too, and damp towels were rolled up in the corner.

A tray with the remains of a breakfast was beside Father’s bed. Wasps buzzed around the jam and the milk had soured in the jug.

Out the window Elizabeth saw the garden overgrown and unwelcoming; nettles and briars choked the plants that she had helped to plant in the spring. This was to be the first year that flowers were acceptable. Up to now only vegetables had had a right to grow in a garden.

Elizabeth looked at Father’s pyjamas thrown on the floor. He had left her a note saying that he had gone to have a consultation with the firm of solicitors who did work for the bank. He said in the note that the manager had told him he must feel free to call on them in his personal capacity.

Imagine. Father had sat down at this filthy table in the kitchen, leaving the house like a shipwreck and written about solicitors and personal capacity. He hadn’t put the dishes under the tap, he hadn’t said he was glad to have Elizabeth back.

No wonder there was no light in his life nowadays.

A wave of irritation about Mother came over Elizabeth suddenly. It wasn’t fair. It just wasn’t fair. People had to stay where they were. Aunt Eileen didn’t like a lot of things, but there was no question of her running off. She did not like the way Uncle Sean talked about the British and the war, she didn’t like Eamonn’s ‘rough friends’, as they were called. She didn’t like the way Aisling answered back, or Maureen brought all her dirty clothes down in a bag from Dublin to be washed at weekends. She didn’t like Peggy’s hair falling into her eyes or the postman coming in to neck with Peggy when everyone was out. She didn’t like Niamh acting the baby to get her own way. Aunt Eileen got very cross if Donal went out without his coat or scarf, or if anyone ever mentioned the folly of Irishmen who had joined up during the war. But Aunt Eileen was able to cope. Her mouth would go into a tight line, and she would just get busier and busier. And even Monica

 

Hart’s mother who was meant to have ‘nerves’ coped with things when they went wrong. There had been some trouble when Mr Hart came back but Mrs Hart hadn’t just packed her bag and left. And remember that poor Mrs Lynch, Berna’s mother, her husband was awful, really awful, he had come around to the house in the square and nearly frightened them to death and he had been found drunk in bus shelters and everything. And Mrs Lynch didn’t get on the next bus out of town.

Mother was behaving very badly, and it was silly. Suppose things went wrong with Harry Elton? She couldn’t keep running away all the time. She really should face up to things. The nuns had always said that life was not meant to be easy. God had implanted in us a sense of restlessness so that when we got to heaven in the end, we’d calm down, and know the meaning of peace. That might well be true, certainly the restless bit was, everyone had it. Why did Mother give in to it when other people were able to damp it down?

Elizabeth sighed and just as she was about to boil a saucepan of water and start to cope with the mess an even greater wave of irritation came over her. He didn’t love her, any more than he loved Mother. Father was incapable of loving people, he had become so wrapped up in himself and his worries he didn’t even seem able to see the fact that there were other people around.

Elizabeth put down the saucepan again. For months she had worried about him, she had tried to console him, she had played draughts with him, kept away from subjects that might upset him, steered away from danger areas and tried to keep an, atmosphere of normality in the house. Things were not normal. He and Mother didn’t even like each other any more. They both said they loved Elizabeth, and presumably they both wished her well, and were sorry that things hadn’t turned out the way that people always hoped they would turn out when they were young and had a baby girl.

And if things weren’t normal and if Father and Mother had actually spent the week deciding something so utterly non-normal as whether Father should divorce Mother for adultery and desertion or whether Mother should want Father to be a gentleman and go off to Brighton with a lady and pretend to spend the night with her so that a detective could say that Father was committing adultery, then that was about as non-normal as things could get.

Elizabeth stood up full of resolution. So why on earth should she, Elizabeth, pretend that things were normal? Why should she be the only one of the three of them acting as if nothing had happened? She was going to please herself now. Everyone else seemed to be acting as if they lived as individuals. So, what did she want to do, because whatever it was she was jolly well going to do it.

She didn’t want to run away to Kilgarret. First there would be too much trouble, too much upset. Auntie Eileen would have to cope with Mother and Father, both writing and telephoning and perhaps even coming over to Kilgarret. Anyway, Aisling might not want her now, Aisling seemed very busy for the summer with her friend Joannie Murray and all these friends of Joannie’s, the Grays who lived in a big house with stables outside the town. Perhaps it wouldn’t be the same with Aisling, and she’d be in the way. It would be hard at the convent too. Sister Catherine would want to know why she was back, the nuns wouldn’t understand about divorce and Mother going off with Harry Elton, and even less about Elizabeth running away. Uncle Sean? He always liked her, perhaps he would just say that it was a further sign of the decaying English empire that their marriages couldn’t even hold together. But would it be fair to ask them to pay for her? It would cost money to have her. And perhaps Father would be so cross he wouldn’t send any.

No, going to Kilgarret would hurt too many people. And it wouldn’t work. She couldn’t go and live with the Harts; they wouldn’t agree, it would be too strange to move a few streets away. It would cause too much talk. She didn’t want to live with Mother and Harry because that would be saying she approved of what they were doing, and she did not. Anyway they giggled too much and made jokes that left her out and-then said, ‘Sorry Darling’. But she’ would not live in this house clearing up dirt and rubbish and trying to look after

 

Father and cheer him up, getting no thanks and no love in

return.

Elizabeth went to her desk and got a pad of paper. Then, very carefully, she wrote three letters.

Mother, Father and Harry

You have all said that you want the best for me. Thank

you. I want the best for you all too.

I do not think that coming back to a cold, dirty house with no explanations from any of you is the best for me. I do not think it is even half-way towards the best.

I am going back to the Harts. I shall tell them that you .would like another week to make up your minds about the future. I shall return again next Saturday to see what you have all worked out.

I am about to begin my last two years at school; at the end of these holidays I will need somewhere to live where I can study and have peace and freedom from worry. I would prefer to live here in Clarence Gardens with Father, but I am not going to clean the place up so that it will be fit for us. It is like a pig-sty. If you decide that this is where I shall live please make arrangements to have it cleaned, and tell me what you intend to do about laundry from now on. I do not mind doing the cooking for Father and myself, but if I am going to study hard I will not have time to stand in queues for things, so there should be some other arrangement made about shopping.

I am sorry to sound so businesslike about this, but I have been shocked and hurt, sitting here realising that nobody is giving any thought to what is going to happen

next.

You will all say that I am upset. I am. I have taken fifteen shillings from the piggy bank because I think if I am going to ask the Harts if I may stay another week I should give them a present. That’s something nobody ever thinks of either.

When I come back next Saturday around three o’clock, it would be nice if you were all here. It will not help matters, it will only make them worse, if you come to Mrs Hart’s house to discuss it there.

It’s been going on for months. It can wait another week.

Elizabeth

She found three envelopes, and addressed one to Father. She left it propped beside the dirty milk bottle.

Then she walked to the lodging house where Mother still stayed and dropped it in the door. Then she squeezed the third envelope in through a slit between the door and the side of Harry Elton’s van which she saw parked near the lodging house. It fell on the floor where he would see it. Hitching her bag up on her shoulder she headed towards the Harts’ house. Monica saw her coming and ran to the door, delighted. With a wry sort of a smile Elizabeth thought that Aisling would be proud of her.

Elizabeth woke the following Saturday with the taste of dread in her mouth. There had been a message, a note slipped into the Harts’ house late on Sunday night. Nobody had seen who delivered it. It had been as brusque as Elizabeth’s own letter.

You are perfectly right, nobody has been businesslike, and it has taken you to show us. George, Harry and I will be happy to make plans with you next Saturday. You can reassure the Harts that it will all be solved by then. Violet

Elizabeth thought with a pang, as she read and reread the note, that she must indeed have grown up suddenly if Mother was referring to Father as George and to herself as Violet.

Throughout the week she had accompanied Monica absentmindedly on various outings with the unsuitable boyfriend; they went to the cinema a great deal and Monica and Colin kissed while Elizabeth stared at the screen. Monica had said that Elizabeth should say her parents had sent the

 

fifteen shillings for entertainment money for the girls. Mrs Hart had thought this very reasonable, and indeed generous. Mr Hart had grunted and warned them not to stay out too late and not to injure their eyes by being too close to the flickering screen.

Now it was time to go home and face what had to be faced. Elizabeth washed her hair and sat in the garden while it dried.

‘You have a beautiful head of hair,’ Mrs Hart said approvingly, ‘it’s like silk.’

‘That’s very nice of you, I think it’s a bit wishywashy,’ Elizabeth said.

‘No, in fact women try to dye their hair your colour, flaxen, you’re very lucky.’

Mrs Hart was shelling peas. Elizabeth started to help her. ‘You’re very helpful,’ Mrs Hart said. Monica was up in her room reading a movie magazine and working out a complicated method of meeting Colin next week.

‘I always get on with other people’s mothers better than with my own,’ said Elizabeth sadly. [

‘Everyone does,’ Mrs Hart said cheerfully. ‘It’s the law of ‘ averages, isn’t it? If you see someone too much you learn to hate them. Monica hates me, Mr Hart would hate me if he didn’t go out so much. People shouldn’t see each other too much. It leads to trouble.’

‘That’s a bit depressing isn’t it?’ Elizabeth stopped with the peas in the pod open and ready to fall. ‘I mean, there’s not much point in love and families and friends if you’re going to get tired of people when you see a lot of them… .’

‘It may be depressing,’ Mrs Hart said, ‘but it’s the truth. Look dear, haven’t you got the living proof of it in your own house this afternoon?’

Even the front garden looked neater as Elizabeth crossed the road to 29 Clarence Gardens. She had her own key, but lest she catch people unawares she decided to ring at the door. It was just ten past three, she had dawdled on the way in case it looked too businesslike to arrive spot on time. With a lurch of her heart she noticed Harry Elton’s van parked outside the gate.

Father answered the door.

‘Welcome home, dear,’ he said. ‘How are all the Harts?’

‘Oh, they’re fine,’ Elizabeth said. She left her case in the hall, hung her school blazer on the hall stand, and noticed with a quick glance that the place had been cleaned. The carpet was swept, and the paintwork had been wiped. So far so good.

In the kitchen, Mother and Harry sat at the table rather awkwardly and stagily; for the first time since the whole business had begun they seemed ill at ease and selfconscious.

‘Here you are,’ boomed Harry in a falsely cheerful voice.

Mother stood up. She was twisting a handkerchief in the way she did when she was upset.

‘How nice you look darling, your hair is lovely.’

‘Thank you Mother, hello Harry.’ Elizabeth was so accustomed to jollying everyone along and pretending that nothing was amiss that she almost fell into the role again. She had to steel herself to remain aloof rather than creating some bustle and air of business to tide over the awkwardness around her. She stood very deliberately waiting for the next move.

It came from Mother.

‘We’ve made some tea. It’s cooling a little, shall we make some more?’ She was awkward. It wasn’t her kitchen any more. She looked to her husband. ‘George? What do you think?’

‘I don’t know. Would you care for some tea Elizabeth?’ he asked politely.

‘No thank you, we had a late lunch at the Harts,’ Elizabeth” said, bouncing the ball right back to them. Time could not be spent with kettles, artificial activity could not be generated.

‘Well, it’s not my place really, but won’t you sit down, my girl,’ said Harry. Mother darted him a nervous glance and Father a resentful one.

‘Thank you, Harry,’ said Elizabeth and took the proffered chair.

 

There was a silence.

‘Monica all right is she?’ Mother asked.

‘Oh fine,’ said Elizabeth.

Father cleared his throat. ‘We did have discussions during the week … er … we faced the things that had to be faced, and … er … as you requested we are all here. You see.’

George stopped. Elizabeth looked at him levelly. ‘Yes Father.’

‘And it’s only fair that you should be brought into the discussion and your views … sought… on aspects of what we discussed.’

Elizabeth remained silent.

Mother took over. ‘It hasn’t been easy, you’ll know yourself some day that the big things in life are not easy to discuss, and they cloud everything else. But as you pointed out, we were all ignoring the little things as well. So, what it boiled down to is this… . Your father is very generously going to give me evidence, let me divorce him. He will agree to do this because it is a courteous thing to do, and a gentleman’s attitude. I do not deserve it, since as you know I am the one who is at fault. In return I shall ask your father for no allowance of course, no settlement. Harry and I will start again as if I were a girl with no stake, no belongings. I shall keep my clothes and some small pieces of china and furniture. Your father will employ a woman, whom I shall find, to come twice a week to do the laundry and cleaning. I have already cleaned out the entire kitchen and cupboards and listed what brands we buy … used to buy. It’s all there.’

Elizabeth raised her eyes and looked approvingly at the cupboards, which had even had a new coat of paint.

‘Harry has dug the back garden. From now on if your father doesn’t like working it himself he could give some as an allotment. Plenty of people do that. There is a back entrance so you would not be disturbed… .’

‘We should wait and see how it turns out, perhaps you might enjoy doing it now that the basic stuff has been done.’ Elizabeth stood up and looked out at the tidied squares and the cut-back briars and thorns. Harry must have worked all week on it.

Harry spoke. ‘I’ve been able to get you a stove, an oil stove for your room. Vi was saying you would want a place to study on your own so that George could have the wireless on.’

‘That’s nice,’ Elizabeth said.

‘And I got a bookcase, a small bookcase at the secondhand shop, it fits in nicely under your window,’ Father said eagerly.

‘Thank you.’

‘There are new curtains too. Very luckily exactly the same size -they

were changing curtains in the family hotel where I’m staying so I took the opportunity. They’re blue, like the bedspread. …”

‘Thank you very much.’

A silence.

Mother said, ‘Does all that seem suitable darling? I mean, I know we’re talking about inessentials, but you know, for the moment, the sort of nuts and bolts.’

‘Yes, Mother, I think that’s fine.’

‘Your mother wants to know whether you will go on living here with me or whether you want to tell us what you would prefer.’

‘I’ll go on living with you Father, if that’s all right. And if we’re both fairly tidy and don’t make demands on each other I’m sure we’ll get along just fine. I think you should go out more, Father, in the evenings. Go to meet people, or to play cards. I won’t be much company in the evenings, I’m going to study, and it would be dull for you if you didn’t go out a bit.’

‘Yes, yes, of course, of course.’

‘Mother, will you and Harry be nearby, will you want to come around and see us?’

‘Well, no dear, that’s what I was going to say, darling. Actually, your Uncle Harry and I … I mean Harry and I, are thinking of going north. It won’t affect your visiting us in the slightest. If there’s a chance that you’ll come to see us you’ll have the train fare right away… .’

‘Even sooner,’ said Harry.

‘And our home will be your home. But for a lot of reasons, if ft doesn’t seem too harsh we thought… .’

 

Elizabeth looked at Mother helpfully, but did not finish the sentence for her.

‘We thought a new start… and a clean sheet… a fresh start… .’ Her voice trailed away.

Harry butted in. ‘And, as I said, you only have to ask -you

don’t even have to ask-once

we get settled you just turn up, any day any night. It’s as much your place at this is.’

Father gave a kind of snort — it might have been a cough.

‘Thank you,’ Elizabeth said.

‘So that’s about it, I suppose,’ Father said. ‘Unless there’s anything else you want to discuss.’

Elizabeth’s voice was very calm. ‘No, that’s fine, really. I think that covers everything. Have you all discussed everything, I mean, there’s nothing more you have to clear up about arrangements and money and divorces and everything … ?’ She sounded as if she were talking about a shopping list. Detached, anxious to help, efficient.

‘No, I think that side of things is all… .’

‘Sorted out…’ Father finished for Mother. She gave him a little smile and he half-smiled back. Elizabeth’s heart nearly burst. Why couldn’t they make the smiles last, and maybe they would all burst out laughing and Harry Elton would go out and drive away with a wave and it would all be perfect.

But that didn’t happen. Mother picked up her bag and gloves, looked proudly around the kitchen that she had decorated in order to leave it with a clear heart. Harry pinched the small geranium on the window sill.

‘Give that a lot to drink, Elizabeth, thirsty little devils, geraniums.’

Father stood politely holding the door open for the man who was taking his wife away. Elizabeth walked out to the van.

‘I’ll write in a week,’ Mother said.

‘Great,’ Elizabeth said.

‘I mean it, you know, whatever home we get will have a room for you, Elizabeth, we’ll put blue curtains in that too,’ said Harry.

‘I know you will, thank you, Harry.’ Elizabeth shook his hand. He gripped her around the elbow as well as shaking hands; he was very eager to give her a hug but didn’t dare… .

Mother didn’t look to see whether Father was at the door or not.

‘Oh, I wish things were different.’ Her eyes were full of tears, she looked very lost and young somehow. ‘Oh if you knew how … how I wished that things could be different.’

Elizabeth sighed. Mother blinked away the tears.

‘I’ll say no more now. I’ll say it all in the letter. Bless you my dear, dear Elizabeth.’

‘Goodbye Mother.’ Elizabeth touched Mother’s thin cheek with hers, Violet held on to her, shaking.

‘Say it in a letter, that’s best,’ Elizabeth said. Wordlessly, Mother got into the van and waved.

They were gone.

Father was standing at the kitchen table. ‘We’ll take it in turns to wash up after meals,’ Elizabeth said. ‘You do this one, I’ll do supper. I’m going up to my room now.’ She managed to get out without breaking down. She grabbed the bag she had brought back from the Harts’ and ran up the stairs. She closed the door and threw herself on the bed with its new blue bedspread. She stuffed the pillowcase with its new blue frill into her mouth to muffle the sobs. She cried until her throat was sore, her ribs ached and her nose was so stuffed up she could hardly breathe. If she had taken the pillowcase away from her face the sound that came out would have been like a long, lonely wail.

Aisling thought that Elizabeth was extraordinary to have been so worried, in case something would happen to her Mam and Dad, and then when it did happen she turned out to be as cool as cucumber. She had written a very unworried kind of letter which had been more about new curtains and fresh painting in the kitchen than it was about what it felt like to be in the middle of a broken marriage. Mam had been very insistent that Aisling did not talk about it.

‘Can’t I tell Joannie? Please?’ Aisling had begged. ‘You see I’ve told her up as far as the bit where she got to calling Mr Elton “Harry”, like I suggested, and Joannie will want to

 

know what happened next. It’s not fair to tell someone the story and then leave them hanging without knowing the end.’

Mam had laughed and said all right, but not to broadcast it around the town. If Elizabeth came back to see them she mightn’t like to hear that everyone in the place knew of her private family matters.

‘Do you think she’ll ever come back?’ Aisling wished she would. But she wished she’d come soon, otherwise there would be too much to catch up on, too many things to explain.

‘Would she come back here, do you think, and start school again here in September?’

Mam thought not; she said she had written to Elizabeth and suggested it as a possibility; but Elizabeth had replied that bad and all as things were she would feel worse if she deserted her father entirely.

‘I don’t know why she writes such things to you,’ grumbled Aisling, ‘she only told me about the blue curtains.’

‘She told me about those too,’ Eileen looked worried. ‘I think she was very upset by the whole business… . You know all of them doing up the house but for the wrong reasons.’

‘Um.’ Aisling was vague. ‘Mam, would Mrs White, you know, Elizabeth’s mother … would she technically be in mortal sin and everything, living with Mr Elton? I know she’s not a Catholic, but she was at a Catholic school with you … and she was baptised … and it could be a sin.’

Mam ran after her with the tea towel she happened to have in her hands and started to belt her around the legs… . ‘Will you go away you stupid idiotic child and stop bothering me about sin! Sin, sin and more sin… what nonsense you all talk.’

But Mam was laughing. Laughing at somebody breaking their marriage vows… . Mam was hard to fathom sometimes… .

‘I wonder where they did it?’Joannie speculated as they both rubbed Vaseline on to their eyelashes with the narrow bits of combs, flicking them upwards.

‘Did what? Who?’ Aisling concentrated intensely but the lash wouldn’t bend. ‘The best I can do is to make these look like spikes. Why do yours bend? Are they made of weaker fibre or what?’

‘I think they’re naturally curly, I have a feeling they might be.’ Joannie examined her eyelashes, pleased. ‘No, I was talking about the couple, you know, Elizabeth’s mother and that man … where did they make love?’

‘I never thought of that. His house maybe?’

‘But he didn’t have a house remember, always in lodging houses. They couldn’t go there. Maybe they went to hotel rooms for the afternoons.’

Aisling thought about that. ‘I think you have to stay in a hotel once you book in. I don’t think you can leave at teatime and say that’s enough. Maybe they didn’t do it at all, maybe they only held hands and necked.’

‘Oh, don’t be silly!’Joannie was very cross. ‘Of course they did it, wasn’t adultery mentioned and all? I mean, necking isn’t adultery. Anyway you’d never leave one man and go off with another unless you’d done it with the other. Stands to reason.’

Aisling didn’t agree with this. She put down her mirror and hugged her knees as she sat on Joannie’s bed. She looked around the big room with its windows down to the floor. The Murrays’ house was one of the best houses of Kilgarret. Eamonn always said, ‘Off to your friends the Rockefellers?’ when she went to Joannie’s house.

‘I think you’ve got it all wrong, Joannie,’ she said seriously. ‘I think you think that most of the world is much more interested in doing it than they really are. Elizabeth and I used to say we’d never mind if we never did it as long as we lived____’

‘Ah, but that was ages ago … I bet you feel different now.’

‘No I don’t,’ said Aisling with spirit. ‘I really mean this. I think it’s something everyone goes on about and makes a big thing out of and nobody likes it at all. It’s love people want. That’s different to doing it.’

‘They’re meant to be the same.’Joannie’s round face was

 

puzzled. ‘Didn’t you listen when Sister Catherine said that love was the highest expression of doing it — or was it doing it was the highest expression of love? Remember, we nearly choked trying to keep straight faces in class? It was a scream.’

‘Sister Catherine never talked about doing it!’ Aisling was amazed at the very idea.

‘No, she didn’t use those words … she said something about the high something of married love resulting in the creation of children … if that’s not doing it what is?’

‘Yes, I remember. But, honestly, I think it’s the love bit that people want, that’s what all the songs are about and the films and the poems, not all this other thing.’

‘But the other thing is lovely!’Joannie said.

‘How do you know, you’re only going on what people say.’

‘Well, David’s done it.’

‘He never has.’

‘He says he has.’

This was electrifying news.

‘What did he say it was like?’ Aisling was so excited she nearly fell off the bed.

‘He says it was perfect pleasure … and that I’d love it,” Joannie said smugly.

‘That’s no description. Perfect pleasure, sure that’s no help at all, and of course he wants you to think you’d love it, then you would go all the way with him… .’

‘Well, then we’d know anyway … we’d not be sitting round and talking about it and guessing,’ said Joannie mutinously.

‘That’s true mind you,’ said Aisling. ‘But would you mind?’

‘I’d love it,’ said Joannie.

They both whooped with laughter.

‘Then you must. That’s definite,’ said Aisling.

‘Well, why won’t you?’ Joannie was anxious at being thrust into the role of trailblazer.

‘Well, use your head! How can I? You can’t go off and knock at someone’s door. Hallo I’m Aisling O’Connor and my friend Joannie Murray would like me to sample sexual intercourse with someone to give her courage before she does it with David Gray, so may I come in and shall we take our clothes off now?’

‘I didn’t mean that.’

‘But what else could I do? You’re the one who has a fellow and you’re the one whose fellow says it would be pure pleasure for you, and you’re the one who’s mad to try it. I’m only just being a supporter that’s all.’

‘I’d never do it, I’m only talking about it. I’d be terrified of having a baby. Anyway, David’s only asking me because he expects me to say no. Nobody with any sense would say yes.’

‘Because he’d leave you once he had got his way do you mean?’

‘Well, yes, and anyway he wouldn’t be able to trust me would he? You see if I did it with him, then what’s to stop him thinking I’d do it with anyone else?’

‘There has to be a flaw in that, somewhere,’ said Aisling. ‘How does anyone ever get together with anyone else if that’s what they all think?’

‘They get married first silly, then it’s all right,’ said Joannie confidently.

‘But what about the pure pleasure one, the one who did go the whole way?’

‘That was in south Gloucestershire, when he was on holiday. They all do, there, apparently it’s a different kind of way of going on, it’s not like here.’

‘Well, why didn’t he do it with lots of people if it was going on all round him?’

‘Aisling O’Connor, you deliberately pick holes in what people say. It’s impossible to talk to you,’ said Joannie.

‘I’m just interested, that’s all,’ said Aisling. ‘Everyone else seems to think being interested in things is unhealthy. I’ll never know why.’ ‘ť

Joannie’s family liked having Aisling around the house; she was so bright and funny, they thought. Everything Aisling said seemed witty and entertaining when she said it at the Murrays’ table. It seemed self-centred and showing-off according to Mam, Eamonn and Maureen when she said it at home. For the first time, she began to realise that in the

 

Murrays’ house she was a treat, but at home they had had enough of her. Perhaps that was why everyone liked Elizabeth so much in Kilgarret. Because she was a treat. When she went back to her own place it had been awful. Anyway it was just as well that the Murrays did like her because things at home were very depressing. Donal’s illness had left a shadow of terror on Mam. Every time he coughed she would glance at him, while pretending not to.

The day that Father Kearney had come with the extreme unction had been dreadful. One of the nuns had come first to prepare the room and Donal for the sacrament. Da had been very annoyed at that and said that nuns were interfering busybodies and how could a child like Donal need to be prepared for anything? Mam had held Donal’s hand all the time and smiled. Peggy had been crying at the door and Mam had thought she had a cold and said she should go down and sit at the fire rather than stand there in the draught. Father Kearney said that the sacrament worked in one of two ways: it brought back health and strength, or it gave comfort to the sick person to make a happy death. Eamonn had said something under his breath about covering your bets and Mam had nearly murdered him afterwards. Told him to keep his heathen beliefs out of a sick child’s bedroom.

Anyway, Donal was better; he had to be careful never to catch pneumonia again and Mam seemed to think that pneumonia was like an enemy outside the door waiting to come in. Aisling felt it was very peculiar of God to keep sending bad fortune to people who could bear it least. After all, Sean hadn’t been a bad person, he had been a good person who had believed in a cause, and God had let him be blown up, and Donal was by far the nicest of the whole family and God kept giving him whistling chests and bouts of pneumonia on top of his weak lungs. Maureen and Eamonn were awful and they were both as healthy as bullocks. God had no sense of fair play. Mam worked hard and was up till all hours and did she get any holiday or nice clothes? No, she didn’t. Aisling herself had worked like a slave at school this year and what had she got? Any reward? Any thanks? Just a grudging admission that she had come to her senses at last and made an attempt to catch up on lost time. Mrs Murray said that there was a line about ‘Whom the Lord loveth He persecuteth’. They found it eventually and Aisling said that the Lord must be simply mad about her because He persecuted her from morning to night with awful hair, straight eyelashes and demon nuns. Mrs Murray and John, who was Joannie’s brother, a clerical student, thought that was very funny. Aisling repeated the remark at home in case Mam might find it funny and it would make her laugh. Mam said it was blasphemous and that there was great danger that Aisling was becoming a showoff.

Aisling liked talking to John Murray when he was home on occasional weekends from the seminary. He told them things about their trainings which were meant to be secrets. He told the enthralled Joannie and Aisling that sometimes they had lessons in manners so that when they were priests they wouldn’t make eejits of themselves and bring down the respect of the clergy by eating with their knives and shovelling the food into their mouths with their hands. Aisling thought this was uproarious, but as usual got no enthusiasm when she told the tales at home.

‘If that young Murray is cracked enough to go joining the priests when he has all that big family business to have a share in then he’s even more cracked to be telling tales about how daft they’re all inside there,’ said Dad.

Mam was naturally annoyed at the disrespect Dad showed for the church, but she was also annoyed with John Murray. ‘That place is like his family now, you don’t go round telling secrets about the family. It’s disloyal.”

Aisling remembered a few small acts of disloyalty when she had made the Murrays rock with laughter by imitating Dad coming in from work and being like a sultan asking for water to wash himself, a clean towel, his slippers, and the best chair… without words. He didn’t have to speak, so well were his little impatient gestures known; and whoever was handy — Peggy, Niamh or Aisling herself— would run to fill the needs. He never made these little signs at Mam. It was like a pantomime and Aisling had caught it very well. She

 

reddened thinking how cross they would be if ever they knew how she had parodied the nightly routine. But she didn’t feel disloyal spending most of the summer in the Murrays’ house. It was so sunny and it had a big garden that went down to the river. If you wanted to sit in the sun you took out a deck-chair, not a folded rug or one of the kitchen cushions to put on the step of the yard like at home. There were always cakes and biscuits in the Murrays’ house that went back into tins after meals, not like at home where once a thing was out it was eaten and that was that.

Joannie’s romance with David Gray came to a head when school started. He didn’t have anything to do until October and he begged her to skip school, so they could go off for the whole day together. Joannie, tempted and almost weakening, realised the dangers, even though Aisling agreed to cover

for her.

‘I could say to Sister Catherine that you were taken bad on

the way to school, and I had to take you home.’

‘She’d not believe the daylight from you,’ said Joannie honestly if ungratefully.

‘Well anyone she would believe the daylight from wouldn’t do it, that’s the whole problem,’ said Aisling.

David’s blandishments proved too much. He was going to pack a picnic hamper he said, and some cider. He had a loan of a car they could have the whole day, go off to some place in the mountains or by the sea. Joannie decided to risk it. She thought her best chance of success was to leave Aisling out of it. Reluctantly Aisling agreed. She was still considered -grossly unfairly -to

be a troublemaker; there was no point in creating suspicion for Joannie.

It was by great luck a day when the Murray house would be empty. Mrs Murray was going to Dublin, shopping, John would not be back from the seminary; nobody was likely to call; Tony, the other brother, was in Limerick learning the trade in a wine merchant’s, he would not be back. Noreen, the Murrays’ maid, was on holiday, she had gone to her people in Wexford. It was the one day in the whole year that Joannie would have an alibi.

Twenty minutes into the first lesson, which was Christian doctrine, Joannie stood up and said she felt sick; after some time in the cloakroom she came back and said she felt awful, and could she go home? Sister Catherine looked round the class for a girl to accompany her; her eye didn’t rest for a second on Aisling, who was amongst those waving an enthusiastic hand to be the companion. ‘Mary Brady, you go with Joannie, and when you have her safely delivered there, come straight back.’ Sister Catherine had chosen the class goody-goody, the Child of Mary, the most reliable and honest girl in the school, whose intention of becoming a nun and joining the order the day she left school was known to everyone. Wistfully Aisling looked out of the window and saw Joannie Murray setting off on her adventure. She found it very hard to concentrate on the Acts of the Apostles.

When Mary Brady came back, eyes virtuously downcast, Sister Catherine asked was everything all right.

The innocent accomplice explained that Joannie had seen her mother and waved to her at the window and she had gone in and was fine. Sister Catherine thanked Mary for her help, Mary smiled, and Aisling O’Connor sighed a sigh of pure

envy.

A mystery always hung over the details of that day. Like how the whole idea of the picnic came to be abandoned so early, and what the cider had tasted like, and why they decided to drink it in Mrs Murray’s bedroom. And it was never clearly explained why Tony, who lived with cousins in Limerick, had come home unexpectedly, and why he had been so upset. The combination of all these things had been a confusion Aisling had never known.

David Gray was forbidden to come near the house again by Tony. There had been great threats about how the Grays would react if they had been told the circumstances. Joannie spent what she always called the worst hours of her life begging Tony to believe that it would not help if Mummy were informed. Mummy went mad over things, and she would never go to Dublin for the day and shop again if she was given a confused account. Tony had said, ‘In Mummy’s bedroom, of all places, of all places. On Mummy’s bed.’

 

Aisling only heard it in fits and starts. She had called round to the Murrays’ as arranged at seven that evening when the picnic should have been finished and shortly before Joannie’s mother was meant to return from Dublin. Instead of exciting details and perhaps a glimpse of David fleeing into the distance … Joannie sat red-faced at the kitchen table with Tony. Lord, he must have seen them coming back from the picnic. Oh Lord, what a desperate bit of luck. Joannie sounded funny and distant.

‘Oh Aisling, it’s not such a good time, I’m having this sort of chat with Tony… .’

‘Sure… .’ Aisling was puzzled. But she took the message. ‘Hallo Tony, you back for a holiday?’

‘Sort of,’ Tony grunted. He was the one of the family she knew least. He was the eldest, nearly twenty-eight now. He seemed to have got good-looking since she had seen him some months ago, or maybe he was good-looking because he was obviously in a very bad temper. People got good-looking when their eyes flashed and their jaws got grim. Aisling had discovered this from reading and from the films.

‘Right, I’ll be off, will you come round to my place later or … what?’ she asked Joannie.

‘Aren’t you going to ask her how she feels, or was the whole school in on this?’ Tony enquired.

‘Yeah, sure, that’s what I came round for, to know are you all right? Maybe it’s flu, Sister Catherine was… .’

‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’Joannie said.

‘Right,’ Aisling said huffily, and swung out. Next day at school, Joannie, still red-eyed, had given substance to the belief that she hadn’t been well. In fact, Sister Catherine was moved to wonder should she have taken another day to make sure she had recovered. Apparently she was saved by the skin of her teeth; Tony had seen sense, she had promised not to get involved with anyone, least of all the Grays. She had tried to explain to Tony that they were doing nothing only fooling around, but he had got into a worse humour at everything she said.

‘And were you only fooling around?’ Aisling asked eagerly. Joannie was distant.

‘That’s not the point, the point is that he came back.’ She had a look of such disappointment on her face that Aisling decided not to pursue the technical details, they could wait.

‘Why did he come back anyway?’ she asked.

‘He’s got fed up of Limerick, he came back to ask Mummy could he start working in our business here, you know take over himself sort of. He says he knows everything, and he got restless yesterday and drove back to talk to Mummy about it. Oh dear God, why couldn’t he have got restless today instead of yesterday? Tell me God, why did you let him get restless yesterday?’

‘I suppose to prevent you from committing a mortal sin,’ Aisling said seriously. When you thought about it, God was very devious.

Tony Murray moved back to Kilgarret that autumn. It seemed to take him a long time to forget what he regarded as a great transgression, and a sign of his little sister’s weak moral character. Since Aisling had cunningly been freed from any complicity in what had happened, she was not regarded with suspicion and she could come and go as she wished. Aisling wondered would Sean have felt the same and been so difficult about it if he had been alive. But then the thought of being with anyone on Mam and Dad’s bed was so unlikely, and the house being empty ever was so unlikely, you couldn’t really compare it. Anyway, the thought of going all the way seemed even less likely than ever now that Joannie, who would have been her only companion in that field, was virtually under lock and key.

The nuns had given Mam and Dad the depressing opinion that Aisling was not of a scholarly frame of mind. Like Maureen, she would probably be more successful in work where no great further study was required.

‘Don’t ever let Maureen know they said that about it not being a studying kind of a life,’ Mam had said. ‘The poor girl is demented by all those books on anatomy and physiology. She’d go up to the school and go for them if she were to know that.

Aisling didn’t mind one way or the other. The school

 

suggested that she went to the local commercial college also run by their nuns. Here she could learn shorthand, typing, commercial English and bookkeeping. It sounded better than going back to do the sixth year and study for her Leaving Certificate. Joannie was leaving anyway and going to a school in France for a year. It wasn’t a finishing school, it was a French convent where they would learn to speak French perfectly, and do sewing and cooking. Tony had been very keen on the idea and Mrs Murray thought it seemed sensible too. It would make a lady out of her. Mam had smiled when Aisling had told her that.

‘That’s why I was sent to the convent in Liverpool, and look what happened to me. And that’s why poor Violet was sent there too. Ladies indeed.’

‘You’re much more of a lady than Elizabeth’s mother,’ said Aisling loyally.

Mam was pleased but she pretended not to be. ‘We don’t know what’s going on in Violet’s mind,’ she said.

‘Well, at least you didn’t break up your marriage and go off and live with someone in sin and pretend it was all Dad’s fault.’

‘No,’ Mam said thoughtfully, ‘at least I didn’t do that.’

Dad wasn’t pleased that the nuns had said Aisling was not academic. He had been in a bad humour anyway and the news made him worse. While the door was still open Aisling heard him complaining bitterly.

‘Fine lot of children we reared. The one couldn’t wait to go and throw his life away for the British, another is meant to be in a job that doesn’t need much brain work. We were told at the time that it was the divil and all getting her into that hospital.’

‘Will you stop that…’ Mam interrupted.

‘I will not stop. I’ve Eamonn standing like a corner boy in the shop with a crowd of thick louts in and out looking for him, Donal is so sickly the Lord knows what we’ll make out of him, Niamh is a spoiled madam and the only one we had any hopes for, those bloody nuns say, “she’s not academic, she’s not the studying type”. Well what was she with them all those bloody years for … ?’

‘Sean.’ Mam’s voice was stronger.

‘Now, what are you putting on that face for? Things are not all right. What are you and I breaking our backsides working for, what’s the whole thing for, Eileen, if the children aren’t going to get on, and do better than we did and … ?’ Dad’s voice was a bit shaky but he shouted. ‘I mean if there’s any purpose in the whole thing isn’t it that the children will do well… ?’ Aisling didn’t hear what Mam said because Mam had banged the door shut very firmly.

Elizabeth wrote when she heard that Aisling was going to the commercial college. She said she had a memory of it being a second-best sort of place.

… I know I sound preachy, but is there any point in going there if it’s not the place that will give you the qualifications? Yes, I can hear Sister Catherine’s voice too, but they’re right. It’s something like having the right clothes and implements to climb a mountain. And isn’t life like a rotten mountain most of the time? I think you should go back to the convent and do the awful old stuff and get your Leaving Certificate, and then go to the commercial college, because once you had the exam, you’d be safe. Or that’s what I think.

Aisling had thought about it. In a way Elizabeth was right. In a way it would be marvellous to cock a snook at the nuns, to put her finger to her nose and say, I got my Leaving and you told my Dad I was an ignoramus… . Yes, in a way. But it would be so hard, and she was miles behind, miles. And she couldn’t bear being with all those creepy ones who were. brainy and who would think she had ideas above her station. And she’d look so silly crawling back and saying that she had been wrong not to have worked harder. It would be admitting that all her antics up to now had only been an act. No. She was going to go to the commercial school. She would get a good job from there, she’d do the kind of work she liked doing, not learning rivers and kinds of soil and trade winds in geography, and all the terms of the treaties and the lists of the

 

penal laws, and all the endless, endless things in history.

At least typing and bookkeeping would be new, and shorthand, and she would start equal to everyone else, and this time she would work and come out top of the whole year … then she’d get herself a great job with maybe a bank manager or open an insurance office. And then that yellow-faced Sister Catherine with her thin whining voice wouldn’t be able to make sarcastic remarks, and Dad wouldn’t feel that it hadn’t been worthwhile to have her, and Mam would be delighted and say that Aisling had great spirit, and Elizabeth would write one of her letters and say she had been all wrong, that Aisling had done the right thing.

Aisling wished that Elizabeth were here. It was silly to have a best friend miles away in England studying in a blue bedroom instead of here in Kilgarret where she should be.

There were bridge classes two nights a week in the old WVS Hall. The fee of one and sixpence a night meant that only respectable people would attend, and it included tea and biscuits. Elizabeth enrolled Father and herself as soon as she saw the poster.

‘I don’t want to learn to play bridge,’ said Father.

‘Neither do I, but we’d better. Let’s look on it as some kind of survival raft.’ After four lessons, they began to enjoy it.

One night as they walked home together, he said, ‘Once you realise that none of it means what it says, it’s quite interesting.’

‘How do you mean?’ Elizabeth was thinking about Aunt Eileen. She hadn’t told her about the proposed bridge classes when last she wrote. Aunt Eileen would have approved of her being kind to Father but only wealthy Protestant people like the Grays played it in Kilgarret.

‘Well when you say two spades, it doesn’t mean that you have two spades. In fact it needn’t mean any spades at all. It’s just a code. It’s a way of telling your partner you have a fairly reasonable hand in most things… .’ Father was what might even be called animated. Elizabeth was about to tuck her hand into his arm, but she held back. If she did it once, then Father would expect her to be that kind of person always. They didn’t touch each other. They were managing very well on this formal level. Better keep it like that.

‘I know what you mean,’ she said seriously, ‘but then I think a lot of conversations become like that as you get older. Sort of code, not saying what you mean, and hoping everyone else knows the rules.’

Mother did write quite a lot as it turned out. Elizabeth had expected the rare and rushed notes which had come with a leaden sense of duty around them all the time she had been in Kilgarret. She didn’t write much about life now with Harry, nor did she enquire about life in Clarence Gardens. Instead she talked of the old days, as if Elizabeth was a contemporary who might remember them with her. She talked about how they had been to tennis parties when she was young, parties where sometimes ten servants stood around with glasses of homemade lemonade which were poured from big glass jugs. Ten servants, standing all afternoon in the heat, while little madams and little masters flung their racquets on the ground or their sweaters and expected them to be picked up.

Elizabeth read these letters carefully. She didn’t know whether Mother sounded wistful for those days, or if she was condemning their selfishness. Eventually she decided that Mother was belatedly trying to tell her something about her life, so perhaps the best thing to do was to reply in the same way, in generalities, telling little anecdotes. Elizabeth discussed the school and compared it to the convent in Ireland; she wrote about the odd people they met at bridge evenings; she sometimes enquired whether there was some way she didn’t know of to make a cake without the fruit all sinking to the bottom, or how to let down a skirt without the hem looking awful. Mother sent her a cookery book eagerly and told her about putting a ribbon or a braid around the edge of the skirt and seemed very pleased to have been asked. Elizabeth tried to think of some household query each week.

She thought that Mother was lonely, she knew that Father was lonely, she felt that Aisling would have nothing to say to her these days and only wrote when Aunt Eileen wrote. She worried that Aunt Eileen was too busy and was only making

 

up nice things to ask like she made up for Mother. She knew that Monica Hart thought she was a boring swot nowadays, no fun, and no use as a decoy for the various young men, since she insisted on staying at home and studying.

And she didn’t even have the satisfaction of being a brilliant scholar after all this work. She just managed to keep at the top section of her form. Nobody considered her an outstanding pupil, it took her longer than it took the bright girls to understand what was being explained, but she worried at it like a dog at a bone. She would stand shyly beside the mathematics teacher who would look at her with exasperation.

‘I’ve been explaining this all week and you kept nodding, why didn’t you say you didn’t understand … ?’ Then the explanation, quick and often impatient, but usually kind. It wasn’t usual to find a sixteen-year-old who would stand humbly after school, hair falling over her face, and admit that she wanted to understand complicated things but couldn’t. The teachers usually had the world neatly divided: either they understood and could do it and were a reward to you, or they didn’t and never would and idled their way through the school years. Elizabeth fell into neither category.

The art master, Mr Brace, had a lot of time for her. She had been taught nothing at that school in Ireland, he told the other teachers in the staff room. He had asked her what she had done in art class and apparently it had only been pictures of the Virgin Mary, or scenes illustrating the mysteries of the rosary. The other teachers shook their heads absently. Irish convents were indeed full of all kinds of mysteries, but then Mr Brace with his liking for beer at lunchtime was not to be relied on for a factual description. The girls in the school called him Beer-Belly-Brace behind his back and complained to each other that he had smelly breath, but Elizabeth liked him. He explained things to her easily, as if she were on his own level. He used to ask her more and more questions about the convent school. His first wife had been a Roman Catholic but she had never mentioned the mysteries of the rosary. She, in turn, had never thought of perspective before Mr Brace explained it to her, and she flushed happily when he held up her still life as the best in the group. She even enjoyed his history of art classes, which none of the others even listened to. When he held up reproductions of the Old Masters, partly obscured by his dirty thumb-nail, she would look with interest at the picture rather than at Mr Brace’s stomach or finger-nails and she would try to imagine a world of castles and palaces and people with strange closed faces because they were princes. She was very familiar with the Madonna pictures but wondered why they hadn’t painted any of Our Lady of Lourdes; the school in Kilgarret had been full of Lourdes pictures.

‘When was that?’ Mr Brace had asked. ‘I don’t know about it.’

‘Oh, it was maybe a hundred years ago, you know St Bernadette and all the miracles and the people being cured and all,’ said Elizabeth.

‘Well Raphael could hardly have known that in advance,’ said Mr Brace. ‘He wasn’t around to know about the miracles, was he?’

Elizabeth reddened and determined not to speak again. Mr Brace was sorry for her and lent her some books on art history, and one of his precious books of reproductions.

‘I get bad-tempered, and shout at people in class,’ he said. ‘Some day you’ll be in front of a lot of kids and you’ll be the same.’

‘Oh, I won’t be a teacher,’ Elizabeth said definitely.

‘What will you be?’ he asked with interest.

Elizabeth looked at him blankly. ‘I have no idea, but I suppose I’ll think of something when the time comes.’ Her face looked troubled. He was the first person who had asked her that question. Mother had never wondered what she would do and neither had Father. But perhaps a lot of people had to face this kind of decision alone. She tried to remind herself of what Aunt Eileen had always said to Aisling whenever there was a crisis or a cry that things were unfair. ‘Self-pity brings tears to the eyes quicker than anything else.’ Aunt Eileen would be proud of me, she thought from time to time as she walked by herself back to Clarence Gardens, her books under her arm, glad to be out of the big, tiled corridors

 

in the school but not anxious to get back into the empty house.

Often she delayed and walked by the library. They had little exhibitions from time to time and it was nice to stroll around and examine their tables full of model buildings, or ancient Greek reconstructions. The librarian, Mr Clarke, was a kind man. He was an albino and he had very poor sight. He told Elizabeth that in fact he could see much better than people had thought, it just looked worse because he peered so much. He had got the job during the war and had built up the library so well, now nobody could take it away from him. He found art books for Elizabeth to read and, even more helpfully, he got her the prospectus and application forms from the local art college.

‘I don’t think I could really study art, could I?’ Elizabeth asked him doubtfully. ‘I mean, I don’t know anything about it.’

‘That’s why people study things,’ Mr Clarke said, his white head bobbing up and down excitedly. ‘That’s the point.’

Walking back from the library, she often stopped and examined the window of Worsky’s secondhand shop, or rather, antique shop. There were lovely things in the window. She used to tell Mr Clarke about the funny little screens and wondered where they were made. Mr Clarke said she should go in and ask, the owner would be glad to tell her.

‘But I don’t have any money to buy anything, I can’t go in can I?’ Elizabeth was hesitant.

‘Of course you can, that’s what people like, even more than making a sale, to chat about beautiful things… .’

And of course he was right. Mr Worsky showed her the panelling in the screens, explained how lacquering was done, and it was all so much more interesting than anything she had ever heard at school. She looked up more books in the library and told Mr Brace about it after art classes.

If only Aisling were here, she thought a hundred times. She would make such fun of her three friends. Beer-Belly-Brace, the albino in the library and the old Polish refugee, Mr Worsky in the antique shop. But it was good to have three friends. And she was able to go to the cinema too, a lot of girls had no money for that, at least once a week she went to the balcony by herself, to the four-thirty show. She saw Gone with the Wind four times, and she quite understood why Ashley loved Melanie and not Scarlett. She had written that to Aisling and, as she expected, Aisling had disagreed. Aisling thought that Melanie was a wet, mopey, old baggage and she spoiled the story by being so good.

Other people sang songs about being sweet sixteen and just sixteen and the joys of being seventeen. But Elizabeth didn’t join in much. She thought it was a long lonely apprenticeship, and the day she got the news of her scholarship to the art college, she hoped that the weary business of growing up was now over. Father said he hoped it would lead to a secure job; Mother wrote and said that a lot of Honourables were going to art school now and she might meet some. Aisling said she couldn’t understand it, Elizabeth had been no good at drawing at school, but Sister Martin who taught drawing was pleased. Mr Brace said she was the first of his pupils to do so well, Mr Clarke in the library gave her four old art books which were considered surplus stock and inscribed them all for her. And Mr Worsky in the antique shop said that now she was an official art student she might even like to come and work in the shop sometimes.

She did get the job in Worsky’s antique shop. She called in one Saturday, shortly after she had started at the art college and felt she was a bonafide artistic person. At the back of the shop, lost in a catalogue, stood a much younger man than Mr Worsky. Elizabeth’s heart lurched, in case the shop had been sold. She hadn’t been in for a few weeks.

‘What can I get you?’ he asked pleasantly. ‘Or would you like to browse around a bit?’

He was very very handsome, he had a sharp face — that’s what Elizabeth thought was the word you would use to describe it — sort of pointed features, and a lot of black hair falling over his forehead. He looked like a film star.

‘Oh, I wanted to see Mr Worsky. He is still here isn’t he?’

The young man smiled. ‘Oh yes, of course he is, he’s

 

having something he hasn’t had for a long time. A day off. I’m Johnny Stone, his assistant.

‘Oh yes, of course, he told me about you.’ Elizabeth smiled with relief. ‘But he described you as an old man, or I mean I thought you were much older… .’

‘He didn’t describe you to me at all … but you are very young and very attractive, if I may say so.’

Elizabeth smiled and blushed a bit. ‘Thank you very much,’ she said. ‘You’re very kind. I’m Elizabeth White and he once sort of, half-said that if there was extra work here on a Saturday morning he might consider me.’

‘If he doesn’t, he is a very foolish man, and Stefan Worsky is not that.’

‘Oh good, then you’re on my side,’ said Elizabeth earnestly. ‘Can you tell him that I’ve started now, up at the art college, and I’m doing several design courses, as well as history of art, and if it’s all right I might call in one afternoon during the week and ask him if he’d really like me to help out on Saturdays… .’ She looked around. The place was empty. ‘It’s not very busy, do you think he’d really need help?’

‘It’s early still,’ said Johnny Stone. ‘In half an hour the place will be humming. I could ask you to start this morning but that would be a bit pushy. I bet I’ll see you next Saturday. I certainly hope to. …”

‘I hope so too, Mr Stone,’ Elizabeth said solemnly.

‘Oh come on,’ he said.

‘I hope so too, Johnny,’ she said, shaking his hand.

‘That’s better,’ he said.

The engagement between Maureen O’Connor and Brendan Daly was announced in spring, and a September wedding was planned. It certainly came as no surprise to anyone; the surprise had been that they had waited so long. Their walking-out period had been considered long even by Kilgarret standards. Eamonn had heard a joke about them; he heard that Brendan had finally plucked up courage to ask Maureen and he had said, ‘Would you like to be buried with my people?’ He had thought it was great, and he kept telling everyone, until his father had told him to shut his big ignorant mouth.

‘Isn’t it bad enough having the girl being made a fool of by that brood of tinkers without having you laughing like a horse?’

Eamonn was stunned. He had no idea anyone was being made a fool of; he checked it out with Aisling.

‘Apparently, by being seen with him or something, she was saying she was willing; by his not naming the day it looks as if he was taking a bit of time to make up his mind. They’re all cracked in this town,’ Aisling said absently. ‘But what’s the worry? She wanted him, she’s getting him. That’s the system.’

Maureen had been talking about the clothes for the wedding non-stop. Aisling and Sheila Daly were to wear pink. Pink was the right colour for bridesmaids’ dresses. It was a pity about Aisling’s hair, and the clash, but it couldn’t be helped, Maureen wasn’t going to change her whole wedding just because her younger sister had such extraordinary red hair. Aisling shrugged. She could always have Niamh. No, that wouldn’t do, it would look as if there had been a row, it would give cause for gossip. Anyway Aisling and Sheila Daly were around the same height.

Occasionally, Aisling tried to ask Mam was Maureen being normal about this wedding, or was she a bit disturbed; but Mam wasn’t giving any sensible answers. She said that a wedding day was something so special that people should be allowed to have any kinds of fancies they wanted. After the wedding day, being married soon settled down to ordinary things again, so that’s why people let brides go into such states of excitement. No, Mam hadn’t been able to go into a state of excitement herself because things were difficult-in

those days, there was less money, things were more chancy, people had to concentrate so hard on having a living, a stake in somewhere. Mam’s family had lost any bit of money they ever thought they had; Dad’s family had nothing. But this was now; things were far better than the terrible twenties… .

‘But Mam, she’s daft altogether, it’s only old Brendan

 

Daly. I mean it’s only the Dalys she’s marrying, you’d think it was the royal family. Do you know she asked me to get thinner for the day! To lose a bit of weight for the ceremony. I couldn’t believe it.’

Mam laughed. ‘Will you wear a corset and tighten it up a bit and tell her you’ve lost weight? That’s what I’m going to do.’

‘She asked you to lose weight too?’ Aisling could hardly believe it.

‘Yes, but I’m getting on for fifty years of age. I should lose a bit and anyway I’ve more sense than you’ll ever have in your whole life.’

Aisling said she couldn’t study her awful grammalogues and do her shorthand preparation after such a shocking discovery about her mother’s lack of honesty.

‘Go off and write to your friend then,’ said Mam. ‘Give Elizabeth my love, and ask her whether she might come over for the Great Wedding… .’

‘That’s an idea.’ Aisling’s face lit up. ‘Will I tell Joannie about it too, she’ll be home from France in September … ?’

‘No, better do nothing until the love birds have sorted out whether the Murrays are on their list or not,’ Mam smiled.

‘You are laughing at them,’ Aisling said.

‘I am not,’ said Mam.

Elizabeth sent a beautiful present for Maureen’s wedding. It arrived a good three weeks before the day, so there was plenty of time to admire it. It was a small, oval silver dish.

‘It’s what they call a bon-bon dish,’ Elizabeth had written. ‘But I don’t think anyone has bon-bons to put in them, we certainly don’t here. It would do for anything I suppose, maybe biscuits when you have your friends to tea, or bread even, if you were having people to lunch. It’s extraordinary to think of you as a married lady. You’re the first of my friends to become Mrs. I’ve sent a book on hallmarks too, so that you can work out what year it comes from and where it was made. It’s quite interesting. I’m always turning bits of silver upside down and looking up their history. If they don’t have these four marks then it isn’t silver. It’s a nice thing to know. I hope you’ll be very happy, and if I get good grades next June, perhaps I could come to Kilgarret for a visit and see everyone, and you could have me to tea.’

Maureen was childlike in her enthusiasm. Elizabeth was the first person to have called her a married lady, she was the only one to make something special about being married.

‘She’s so educated, and interested in things,’ said Maureen, busy learning all the hallmarks to blind the Dalys with this new sophistication. ‘I wish you were more like Elizabeth, Aisling.’

‘Oh people have always been wishing that,’ said Aisling cheerfully, ‘but it never does them any good.’

Secretly she thought it was a bit wet of Elizabeth to have written such a gooey letter to Maureen and she thought that looking up all these ridiculous names of towns and marks of sterling and makers was just typical.

Dear Elizabeth,

You said to write about the wedding, honestly I don’t know what to write. The main thing is that it went without any disasters. Father O’Mara was drunk, but people stopped him making a fool of himself, and Brendan Daly was a bit drunk. He’s my brother-in-law you know. I’ll be able to say things I heard from my brother-in-law, but I don’t think I heard anything from him. His sister Sheila, do you remember her at school? I’m not surprised if you don’t, she was mousy then and she is mousy now. She normally wears glasses but she didn’t for the wedding and she fell over everything, and her eyes were all screwed up trying to peer out. I told her she was better with them, but that was the wrong thing to say apparently. The speeches were endless, I looked really dreadful. I know I’ve thought’ I looked dreadful in the past but that was actual beauty compared to the bridesmaid dress. If ever you get over here I’ll show it to you. Maureen said it could be changed and used as a dance dress. I said I wanted to keep it for the rest of my life as fancy dress. Another wrong thing to say. I told you, didn’t I, about sort of going with Ned Barrett? There’s nothing to it, we go for walks by the river,

 

and a bit of messing about, but nothing great. We go to the pictures and meet inside too. I don’t think they’d forbid me to meet him but I couldn’t bear all the fuss, and people saying ‘You’re next’. I don’t want to marry Ned Barrett, I just want to practise on him. I was practising a bit down by the river on the corner near the boathouse when who came by but Tony Murray, you know, Joannie’s brother. He gave me a desperate look. I think he thinks Joannie and I are sex-maniacs, because of the incident. Joannie’s gone to learn a year’s domestic science in a place where nearly everyone else is a lady or an Hon. That’s how posh they’ve become. She says it’s awful and she’d prefer to be at home. I’ve got an interview soon for a job, a real job, in Murray’s. Mam says that if Joannie and I are friends then I’m stupid to go and work in the office for them and get a salary. It will change the relationship. I don’t agree. Everyone’s got to work somewhere. What are you doing? You never tell me properly.

Love,

Aisling

Dear Aisling,

I never tell properly! I tell you everything, you tell nothing! What incident makes Joannie’s brother think you’re sex maniacs? Why did you look so awful in the dress? What was it like? How is Donal’s chest? Is Peggy still there -you

never mention her? What’s Maureen’s new house like? Is Uncle Sean’s business going well, does Aunt Eileen still work so hard? Are you really fat or was that just a remark of Maureen’s? There’s so much I don’t know. It makes Kilgarret all seem like a book I read ages ago about a place that’s not there any more.

Anyway, to tell you properly about me. Well it’s hard because you don’t know what life here is like. If I said that Father looks much smarter these days and plays bridge three times a week, you wouldn’t know what a change that is. It’s as if Uncle Sean suddenly started going to tea parties or something. I get a letter from Mother every week. She and Harry have a shop. She keeps asking me to go and visit them and I’m going to go in November. Term has started in the art college. I didn’t realise how lucky I was to have got a place. They made about a dozen speeches telling us we were the creme de la creme and that we must fight to keep our places, because there are hundreds outside waiting for one of us to be thrown out.

The others in the class are very nice. It’s a bit different to the convent, there are hardly any girls. Imagine. I think Aunt Eileen is right about not working for the Murrays. Suppose you wanted more salary, suppose they wanted to sack you? Won’t the other people who work for them feel a bit annoyed when you can go to their house and they can’t? Anyway I don’t suppose I know anything about it, it just doesn’t sound too easy.

I’ve got a job too, on Saturdays. I work in the antique shop I told you about. It’s terrific. I dust the china and the small pieces of furniture, and I fill in stock lists and help when customers come in. It’s run by a super old man called Mr Worsky. He’s Polish, he came over here just before the war. He has two full-time people. His old lady friend, who is sweet but she’s almost blind, and an assistant called Johnny Stone. It sounds like a cowboy’s name doesn’t it? He’s rather like a cowboy too. Very handsome. But not in the shop a lot, alas. He’s prowling the country looking for antiques. Love to everyone. Do they remember me? Do they talk much about what became of me?

Elizabeth