‘Ssh, Margaret. Ssh,’ said Gran as Margaret drooped listlessly over her cup of tea. She put her arm around her daughter and shook her head at Edward. Silenced by Margaret’s unhappiness he drank his tea and left.
The soiree had been wonderful, elegant, refined, the best people … Margaret was ecstatic. Her piano playing had been applauded: ‘Brought a tear to the eye,’ one admirer told her. ‘Such lovely songs from dear old Ireland before the Home Rule traitors spoiled everything.’
The ladies’ gowns were exquisite, such taste. The embroidery they sold to raise money, the pink satin rosebuds and pressed flower arrangements in padded velvet frames, all, all the epitome of artistry. The household furnishings were unbelievably opulent: velvet chairs, floor-to-ceiling curtains of priceless silks, oriental floor rugs. And silver; the table gleamed and glittered with it.
The Goodmans had opened their ballroom for the occasion. Mrs Goodman was the ultimate in graciousness. ‘It was like the houses we were welcomed into before Victor dragged us down. It’s dreadful to be so poor. I’m sure such people don’t even notice how prices keep going up.’
‘And, Matthew,’ Gran asked, ‘what did you think of your afternoon with the Goodmans?’
‘He loved it. Just loved it. Didn’t you, darling?’
Matthew was used to assenting to his mother’s enthusiasms. He nodded. But he hadn’t really enjoyed the afternoon. It had been tiresome sitting by himself on a chair. Occasionally a gentleman passed and stopped and asked awkwardly, ‘Well, and how are you, young fellow?’ or ‘What’s your name, eh?’ or if it were a lady, ‘What a simply gorgeous little boy. Won’t he break hearts later on? Oh, to be still twenty-five when he’s a man.’ And they would look not at him but at their companions.
Twice Matthew tried to answer them. He said, ‘Very well, thank you,’ and, ‘My name is Matthew Donahue,’ but they seemed surprised at his answering as if they hadn’t really expected him to speak. He wondered why some adults addressed him as if they wanted a reply then rarely listened to his answers. Edward didn’t do this. Nor did Gran.
The room was beautiful. When he came in the front door he had been amazed to see the floor patterned in squares and diamonds of reds, greens, purples and golds. But they were not real colours, just reflections which fell in delightful misty streamers from the leadlight windows. For a few seconds they twined about his legs turning them red and purple and he wondered what strange things had happened to his face. He would have liked to look in a mirror. On these windows flowers blossomed and birds sang in the branches of trees but the flowers were stiff, pointed cups and the birds looked like those he had seen dead and stuffed in the museum. He didn’t like things to look alive and not be. It was like telling a lie.
When he looked up the ceiling seemed miles away. It didn’t have rafters and shadows. It was flat and white and huge. Lights hung, not singly but in circular, tiered groups. On the ceiling above each set of lights patterns of flowers entwined in stiff symmetrical circles. He remembered the pattern on the sandalwood napkin ring Edward had given his mother. That had been like these, flowers twisted together weaving in and out of leaves, but he had liked that. It was wood and the flowers grew from it. It had smelled like outdoors. Not like this. He sniffed. He smelled the sweet light smell of women’s clothes and underneath the sickly, airless odour of confinement, of sweat imperfectly concealed.
He noticed that none of the ladies did any of the jobs. Special women in white aprons and caps served tea and cakes and sandwiches and passed around cool drinks. At home Mother and Gran dressed differently when they went out and Mother made beautiful dresses but when jobs had to be done they wore the same sort of clothes. He didn’t think that the ladies who moved back and forth in this room or sat to listen to the music with their hands elegantly resting on their laps, their heads slightly inclined, their hair as polished as the floor or the silver on the table, ever changed into different sorts of clothes.
He felt somehow that they were fixed like the flowers in the ceiling, the birds on the windows and the dead copies of the living in the museum. He was a stranger and longed to be sitting barefooted in the sun on the verandah at home. He felt isolated, alone, not frightened but alone. Everything was pleasant but he did not belong here. It was the first time he had felt there was a place where he belonged and a place where he didn’t.
He tried to imagine Gran at such a gathering. What would she do? Stand in the middle of the room and read? There were lots of lights here. People would walk around her and ask who she was and what she was reading and she’d say, ‘Mmm. What was that?’ or say nothing at all. Gran wouldn’t be fussed. She could go anywhere.
And Edward. If he walked in it would be like Gulliver in Lilliput. He would stride down the room and everyone would shrink and shrink until they were all just eyes looking up at him. Perhaps Edward would pick them up on his hand. If he laughed they might blow off. Or he might pick some flowers off the ceiling like Matthew sometimes picked off cake decorations. Edward could go anywhere or do anything just like Gran.
But Mother? He looked at her nodding and smiling and laughing and patting her hair and her gown, drawing her gloves through her hands and picking at the fingertips. He looked at all the gentlemen who encircled her, nodding and smiling and laughing and taking her hand
