William Trevor - Two Lives

‘She sucks up to the customers,’ Rose said. ‘Palavering all over them. D’you want a slice of cake, Elmer?’

There was a rattle of cups on saucers, and the sound of tea being poured.

‘Is it cherry?’ Elmer said.

‘It is.’

‘I’ll take a slice so.’

There was silence then: the interlude was over. Mary Louise did not enter the dining-room, but returned to the kitchen. She was at the sink when the sisters came in ten minutes later with more of the suppertime dishes. They were quite nice to her, not mentioning the shred of cabbage. Rose offered her a slice of cherry cake but Mary Louise shook her head, not turning round from the sink because she didn’t want them to see she’d been crying.

Elmer went out to the YMCA billiard-room that evening and when he returned Mary Louise was already in bed, with the light out, pretending to be asleep. They’d known she’d be coming back to the dining-room just at that moment. They’d known she’d pause outside the door, arrested by the cross voices. Her tears oozed from the corners of her eyes and ran into her hair, damping her ears and her neck. It hurt her most that they had called her brother a half-wit.

The following afternoon, when Rose and Matilda were engaged in the shop and Elmer was in the accounting office, Mary Louise ascended the bare stairs to the attics. There it was possible to weep noisily, sobbing and panting. She clenched her hands and beat the sides of her thighs with them, punishing her foolishness.

7

She dreams they are eight again, she and Tessa Enright. ‘Once a month you have it,’ Tessa Enright says on a road near Culleen, both of them sent out to look for a ewe that has strayed. ‘You stop it with rags.’

It’s the bane of a girl’s life, Letty says. In the kitchen her mother says to be careful, picking the wedding date. The day she arrives in Miss Foye’s house she has it. ‘Don’t leave me, please,’ she begs that day, but he says he has to.

When they find the sheep it is dead beside a stone. She walks alone out of a wood and there Miss Foye’s house is. ‘You’ll be well off there,’ he says, and she puts her arms around his neck because he is right. He has never been unkind to her.

8

On Christmas Eve 1956 Elmer accompanied Renehan, the hardware merchant from the premises next door, to Hogan’s Hotel. It was half-past four in the afternoon, as it always was when the two made their way along Bridge Street on Christmas Eve. A street musician who only appeared in the town at this time of year was playing a melodeon. The pavements were lively with people from the poor part of the town who left what shopping they could afford to the last couple of hours on Christmas Eve, hoping for bargains. A drunken man lurched in the street, talking to anyone who would listen.

‘A poor year,’ Renehan remarked as they turned into the side entrance that led to the hotel’s bar. It was what the two men talked about on this Christmas occasion: the fluctuations of business during the previous twelve months, difficulties with suppliers in their two different fields of trade, profit and loss. Renehan was an older man, thin and trimly dressed, with a well-kept moustache and a reputation for personal vanity.

‘Shocking,’ Elmer agreed.

The hotel bar was crowded, as festive as the street outside. People like Elmer, not normally seen there, were standing in groups, talking loudly. Paper decorations were strung diagonally across the ceiling.

‘You’ll take the usual intoxicant, Elmer?’ Renehan was known for his ornate, and in this case inaccurate, way of putting things. In his business life he cultivated a joky manner, believing that it attracted customers.

‘As a matter of fact,’ Elmer said, ‘I’ll take a small one.’

Renehan glanced amusedly at his companion. In all the years of this rendezvous the draper had never requested whiskey, not even the year he’d had a cold that should have kept him in bed. Renehan raised his eyebrows the way he’d once seen an actor doing all through a film.

‘That’s married life for you!’ he suggested and gently touched Elmer’s chest with his elbow.

Elmer didn’t reply; you didn’t have to with Renehan. He remained at the back of the bar while the hardware merchant pushed his way through the crowd. He hadn’t drunk whiskey since the night of his honeymoon; last Christmas he’d had a mineral as usual. It might indeed be married life, he reflected as he stood there. Maybe there was more to Renehan’s facetiousness than the man realized.

Noticing his presence, other men saluted Elmer across the bar, other shopkeepers for the most part, a couple of bank officials, Hanlon the solicitor. He wondered what they thought, or if they thought anything at all. Fifteen months he’d been married.

‘Compliments of the season!’ Renehan raised his glass and Elmer slightly raised his. The last thing he remembered of that Saturday night was the barman insisting that he wanted to close. The walk back to the Strand Hotel, the hall and the stairs, any parting words: none of that had remained with him. The next thing he could recollect after the barman said he had a home to go to himself was waking up with his clothes still on him.

Renehan offered him a cigarette, as if presuming that since Elmer was drinking whiskey he would have taken up tobacco as well. Elmer shook his head. He’d never smoked a cigarette in his life, he said, and didn’t intend to.

‘The better for it.’ Renehan’s thin brown fingers were illuminated by the flare of a match as he lit his own. He inhaled, and blew a smoke-ring. He mentioned a farmer to whom he had refused credit during the year.

‘The same with myself,’ Elmer said.

They hadn’t revisited McBirney’s bar during their remaining days at the Strand Hotel because he considered that going there in the first place had been a mistake. On their last night one of the men who shared their table in the dining-room was persistent with an invitation, and Mary Louise apparently wished to return to the public house, indeed seemed to have agreed that they would do so. But he’d stuck to his guns. For one thing, the episode had cost a fortune.

Renehan spoke of other customers, of possible bad debts in the months to come. He mentioned farmers on whom an eye needed to be kept, whose fortunes were on the wane. As well as the three sons who worked with him in the shop, Renehan had a daughter who attended to the accounts. In the bar of Hogan’s Hotel the two men had many a time agreed that it made a substantial difference, not having to employ anyone.

‘Is it gin?’ Elmer asked.

‘With a drop of hot water.’

He made his way to the bar. The manageress of the hotel was assisting the barman with the Christmas custom. She was an unmarried woman of Elmer’s age, on the stout side, with plucked eyebrows and hair that reminded Elmer of the landlady’s hair at the Strand Hotel, being the same reddish shade. He had remarked on the similarity at the time, but Mary Louise said she didn’t think she’d ever laid eyes on the manageress of Hogan’s. Bridget her name was.

‘What’ll I get you, Mr Quarry?’ She smiled at him, her hands held out for the glasses. She was wearing a black dress, and a necklace that glittered on the flesh that was exposed where the dress ended. One of her teeth was marked with lipstick. ‘Oh God, I’m sorry! I didn’t say Happy Christmas, Mr Quarry.’

‘Happy Christmas, Bridget. A small one for myself. A gin with hot water in it for Mr Renehan.’

Years ago he had wondered about marrying a Catholic. When the time came, he’d thought he might have to if there wasn’t anyone else about. He’d looked down from the accounting office one day and seen the hotel manageress – assistant manageress she’d been then – holding a summer dress up against her. For a couple of weeks he’d considered making an approach, but then he’d decided there was no hurry. Would the whole thing be a different story now, he wondered, if he’d reached a different decision? Mixed marriages were two a penny these days.