marrying them this morning I looked down at their two faces and I said to myself, “Isn’t it great God gave them life?’ ”
The three women looked across the lounge, at Teresa standing with her friends Philomena Morrissey and Kitty Roche, and then at Artie, with Screw Doyle, Eddie Boland and Chas Flynn.
‘He has a great career in front of him in Driscoll’s,’ Father Hogan pronounced. ‘Will Teresa remain on in the Medical Hall, Mrs Atty?’
Mrs Atty replied that her daughter would remain for a while in the Medical Hall. It was Father Hogan who had persuaded Artie of his duty when Artie had hesitated. Mrs Atty and Teresa had gone to him for advice, he’d spoken to Artie and to Mr and Mrs Cornish, and the matter had naturally not been mentioned on either side since.
‘Will I get you another glassful, Father?’ inquired Mrs Tracy, holding out her hand for the priest’s tumbler.
‘Well, it isn’t every day I’m honoured,’ said Father Hogan with his smile, putting the tumbler into Mrs Tracy’s hand.
At the bar Mr Atty and Mr Cornish drank steadily on. In their corner Teresa and her bridesmaids talked about weddings that had taken place in the Church of the Immaculate Conception in the past, how they had stood by the railings of the church when they were children, excited by the finery and the men in serge suits. Teresa’s sisters whispered, Agnes continuing about the inadequacy of the man Teresa had just married. Loretta whispered without actually forming words. She wished her sister wouldn’t go on so because she didn’t want to think about any of it, about what had happened to Teresa, and what would happen to her again tonight, in a hotel in Cork. She’d fainted when it had happened to herself, when he’d come at her like a farm animal. She’d fought like a mad thing.
It was noisier in the lounge-bar than it had been. The voices of the bridegroom’s friends were raised; behind the bar young Kevin had switched on the wireless. ‘
‘Bedad, there’ll be no holding you tonight, Artie,’ Eddie Boland whispered thickly into the bridegroom’s ear. He nudged Artie in the stomach with his elbow, spilling some Guinness. He laughed uproariously.
‘We’re following you in two cars,’ Screw Doyle said. ‘We’ll be waiting in the double bed for you.’ Screw Doyle laughed also, striking the floor repeatedly with his left foot, which was a habit of his when excited. At a late hour the night before he’d told Artie that once, after a dance, he’d spent an hour in a field with the girl whom Artie had agreed to marry. ‘I had a great bloody ride of her,’ he’d confided.
‘I’ll have a word with Teresa,’ said Father Hogan, moving away from Teresa’s mother, her aunt and Mrs Cornish. He did not, however, cross the lounge immediately, but paused by the bar, where Mr Cornish and Mr Atty were. He put his empty tumbler on the bar itself, and Mr Atty pushed it towards young Kevin, who at once refilled it.
‘Well, it’s a great day for a father,’ said Father Hogan. ‘Aren’t they a tip-top credit to each other?’
‘Who’s that, Father?’ inquired Mr Cornish, his eyes a little bleary, sweat hanging from his cheeks.
Father Hogan laughed. He put his tumbler on the bar again, and Mr Cornish pushed it towards young Kevin for another refill.
In their corner Philomena confided to Teresa and Kitty Roche that she wouldn’t mind marrying Des Foley the vet. She’d had four glasses of Babycham. If he asked her this minute, she said, she’d probably say yes. ‘Is Chas Flynn nice?’ Kitty Roche asked, squinting across at him.
On the wireless Petula Clark was singing ‘Downtown’. Eddie Boland was whistling ‘Mother Macree’. ‘Listen, Screw,’ Artie said, keeping his voice low although it wasn’t necessary. ‘Is that true? Did you go into a field with Teresa?’
Loretta watched while George Tobin in his Ford Prefect turned a page of the comic he was reading to his children. Her sister’s voice continued in its abuse of the town and its people, in particular the shopman who had got Teresa pregnant. Agnes hated the town and always had. She’d met George Tobin at a dance in Cork and had said to Loretta that in six months’ time she’d be gone from the town for ever. Which was precisely what had happened, except that marriage had made her less nice than she’d been. She’d hated the town in a jolly way once, laughing over it. Now she hardly laughed at all.
‘Look at him,’ she was saying. ‘I doubt he knows how to hold a knife and fork.’
Loretta ceased her observation of her sister’s husband through the window and regarded Artie Cornish instead. She looked away from him immediately because his face, so quickly replacing the face of George Tobin, had caused in her mind a double image which now brutally persisted. She felt a sickness in her stomach, and closed her eyes and prayed. But the double image remained: George Tobin and Artie Cornish coming at her sisters like two farmyard animals and her sisters fighting to get away. ‘Dear Jesus,’ she whispered to herself. ‘Dear Jesus, help me.’
‘Sure it was only a bit of gas,’ Screw Doyle assured Artie. ‘Sure there was no harm done, Artie.’
In no way did Teresa love him. She had been aware of that when Father Hogan had arranged the marriage, and even before that, when she’d told her mother that she thought she was pregnant and had then mentioned Artie Cornish’s name. Artie Cornish was much the same as his friends: you could be walking along a road with Screw Doyle or Artie Cornish and you could hardly tell the difference. There was nothing special about Artie Cornish, except that he always added up the figures twice when he was serving you in Driscoll’s. There was nothing bad about him either, any more than there was anything bad about Eddie Boland or Chas Flynn or even Screw Doyle. She’d said privately to Father Hogan that she didn’t love him or feel anything for him one way or the other: Father Hogan had replied that in the circumstances all that line of talk was irrelevant.
When she was at the Presentation Convent Teresa had imagined her wedding, and even the celebration in this very lounge-bar. She had imagined everything that had happened that morning, and the things that were happening still. She had imagined herself standing with her bridesmaids as she was standing now, her mother and her aunt drinking sherry, Agnes and Loretta being there too, and other people, and music. Only the bridegroom had been mysterious, some faceless, bodiless presence, beyond imagination. From conversations she had had with Philomena and Kitty Roche, and with her sisters, she knew that they had imagined in a similar way. Yet Agnes had settled for George Tobin because George Tobin was employed in Cork and could take her away from the town. Loretta, who had been married for a matter of weeks, was going to become a nun.
Artie ordered more bottles of stout from young Kevin. He didn’t want to catch the half-one bus and have to sit beside her all the way to Cork. He didn’t want to go to the Lee Hotel when they could just as easily have remained in the town, when he could just as easily have gone in to Driscoll’s tomorrow and continued as before. It would have been different if Screw Doyle hadn’t said he’d been in a field with her: you could pretend a bit on the bus, and in the hotel, just to make the whole thing go. You could pretend like you’d been pretending ever since Father Hogan had laid down the law, you could make the best of it like Father Hogan had said.
