Their order was taken, and shouted down the lift-shaft.
‘We might indulge in a drop of wine, Tom. On account of her ladyship’s birthday.’
‘I have a great little French one, sir. Macon, sir.’
‘That’ll suit us fine, Tom.’
It was early, the bar was almost empty. Two men in camel-coloured coats were talking in low voices by the door. Cecilia had seen them before. They were bookies, her father had told her.
‘Are you all right?’ he inquired. ‘You haven’t got the toothache or anything?’
‘No, I’m all right, thanks.’
The bar filled up. Men stopped to speak to her father and then sat at the small tables behind them or on stools by the bar itself. Her father lit another cigarette.
‘I didn’t realize you paid the fees,’ she said.
‘What fees do you mean?’
She told him in order to thank him, because she thought they could laugh over the business of the fees being late every term. But her father received the reprimand solemnly. He was at fault, he confessed: the headmaster was quite right, and must be apologized to on his behalf.
‘He’s not someone you talk to,’ Cecilia explained, realizing that although she’d so often spoken about school to her father she’d never properly described the place, the huts and prefabricated buildings that were its classrooms, the Bull going round every morning with his huge roll-book.
She watched Tom drawing the cork from the bottle of red wine. She said that only yesterday Miss O’shaughnessy’s motorized bicycle had given up the ghost and she repeated the rumour that poor old No-teeth Carroll was on a term’s notice. She couldn’t say that she’d struck a silent bargain with a boy called Abrahamson, who brought to the school each day two dainty little cakes in a carton. She’d have liked just to tell about the cakes because her father would have appreciated the oddity of it. It was strange that she hadn’t done so before.
‘Now,’ said Tom, placing the oysters in front of her father and her steak in front of her. He filled up their wine-glasses and drew a surplus of foam from the surface of someone else’s stout.
‘Is your mother well, Cecilia?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘And everyone in Chapelizod?’
‘They’re all well.’
He looked at her. He had an oyster on the way to his mouth and he glanced at her and then he ate the oyster. He took a mouthful of wine to wash it down.
‘Well, that’s great,’ he said.
Slowly he continued to consume his oysters. ‘If we felt like it,’ he said, ‘we could catch the races at the Park.’
He had been through all of it, just as she had. Ever since the divorce he must have wondered, looking at her as he had looked at her just now, for tell-tale signs. ‘They’d have had a love affair while your father was still around,’ came the echo of Abrahamson’s confident voice, out of place in the oyster bar. Her father had seen Abrahamson’s inkling and had felt as miserable as she had. He had probably even comforted himself with the theory about two people in the same house, she picking up her stepfather’s characteristics. He had probably said all that to himself over and over again but the doubt had lingered, as it had lingered with her. Married to one man, her mother had performed with another the same act of passion which Betty Bloom had witnessed in her parents’ bedroom. As Abrahamson had fairly pointed out, in confused circumstances such as these no one would ever know what was what.
‘We’ll take the trifle, will we?’ her father said.
‘Two trifle,’ Tom shouted down the lift-shaft.
‘You’re getting prettier all the time, girl.’
‘I don’t like my looks at all.’
‘Nonsense, girl. You’re lovely.’
His eyes, pinched a bit because he was laughing, twinkled. He was much older than her mother, Cecilia suddenly realized, something which had never struck her before.
Were the fees not paid on time because he didn’t always have the money? Was that why he had sold his car?
‘Will we settle for the races, or something else? You’re the birthday lady today.’
‘The races would be lovely.’
‘Could you ever put that on for me, sir?’ Tom requested in a whisper, passing a pound note across the bar. ‘Amazon Girl, the last race.’
‘I will of course, Tom.’
His voice betrayed nothing of the pain which Cecilia now knew must mark these Saturday occasions for him. The car that was due to collect them was late, he said, and as he spoke the taxi man entered.
‘Step on it,’ her father said, ‘like a good man.’
He gave her money and advised her which horses to gamble on. He led her by the hand when they went to find a good place to watch from. It was a clear, sunny day, the sky without a cloud in it, and in the noise and bustle no one seemed unhappy.
‘There’s a boy at school,’ she said, ‘who brings two little cakes for the eleven o’clock lunch. He sells them to me every day.’
