wind had gathered, cooling the evening air.
‘It feels so long ago,’ she said. ‘The greater part of my life appears to have occurred since that day when you first came to the house.’
‘I know, Bea.’
He’d seemed extraordinary and nice, and once when he’d smiled at her she’d found herself looking away. She wasn’t unhappy in her marriage, only bored by the monotony of preparing food and seeing to the house and the children. She had, as well, a reluctant feeling that she wasn’t appreciated, that she hadn’t been properly loved for years.
‘You don’t regret it happened?’ he said, stepping out into the street because the pavement was still crowded outside Redmond’s Cafe.
She pitched her voice low so that he wouldn’t hear her saying she wasn’t sure. She didn’t want to tell a lie, she wasn’t certain of the truth.
He nodded, assuming her reassurance. Once, of course, he would never have let a mumbled reply slip by.
Miss Doheny had moved from the bar and was sitting at a table with the Meldrums when Beatrice and her friend returned to the Paradise Lounge after dinner. Mrs Meldrum was telling all about the visit last Sunday afternoon of her niece, Kathleen. ‘Stones she’s put on,’ she reported, and then recalled that Kathleen’s newly acquired husband had sat there for three hours hardly saying a word. Making a fortune he was, in the dry-goods business, dull but good-hearted.
Miss Doheny listened. Strangely, her mind was still on the visitors who had returned to the lounge. She’d heard the girl saying that a walk about the town would be nice, and as the Meldrums had entered the lounge an hour or so ago she’d heard the man’s voice in the hall and had guessed they were then on their way to the dining-room. The dinner would not have been good, for Miss Doheny had often heard complaints about the nature of Mrs Keegan’s cooking. And yet the dinner, naturally, would not have mattered in the least.
Mrs Meldrum’s voice continued: Kathleen’s four children by her first marriage were all grown up and off her hands, she was lucky to have married so late in life into a prosperous dry-goods business. Mr Meldrum inclined his head or nodded, but from time to time he would also issue a mild contradiction, setting the facts straight, regulating his wife’s memory. He was a grey-haired man in a tweed jacket, very spare and stooped, his face as sharp as a blade, his grey moustache well cared-for. He smoked while he drank, allowing a precise ten minutes to elapse between the end of one cigarette and the lighting of the next. Mrs Meldrum was smaller than her companions by quite some inches, round and plump, with glasses and a black hat.
The strangers were drinking Drambuie now, Miss Doheny noticed. The man made a joke, probably about the food they’d eaten; the girl smiled. It was difficult to understand why it was that they were so clearly not man and wife. There was a wistfulness in the girl’s face, but the wistfulness said nothing very much. In a surprising way Miss Doheny imagined herself crossing the lounge to where they were. ‘You’re lucky, you know,’ she heard herself saying. ‘Honestly, you’re lucky, child.’ She glanced again in the girl’s direction and for a moment caught her eye. She almost mouthed the words, but changed her mind because as much as possible she liked to keep her face in repose.
Beatrice listened to her companion’s efforts to cheer the occasion up. The town and the hotel – especially the meal they’d just consumed – combined to reflect the mood that the end of the affair had already generated. They were here, Beatrice informed herself again, not really to say goodbye to one another but to commit adultery for the last time. They would enjoy it as they always had, but the enjoyment would not be the same as that inspired by the love there had been. They might not have come, they might more elegantly have said goodbye, yet their presence in a bar ridiculously named the Paradise Lounge seemed suddenly apt. The bedroom where acts of mechanical passion would take place had a dingy wallpaper, its flattened pink soap already used by someone else. Dirty weekend, Beatrice thought again, for stripped of love all that was left was the mess of deception and lies there had been, of theft and this remaining, too ordinary desire. Her sister, slowly dying in the farmhouse, had been a bitter confidante and would never forgive her now. Tonight in a provincial bedroom a manufacturer of rope would have his way with her and she would have her way with him. There would be their nakedness and their mingled sweat.
‘I thought that, steak would walk away,’ he spiritedly was continuing now. ‘Being somebody’s shoe- leather.’
She suddenly felt drunk, and wanted to be drunker. She held her glass toward him. ‘Let’s just drink,’ she said.
She caught the eye of the old woman at the other table and for a moment sensed Miss Doheny’s desire to communicate with her. It puzzled her that an elderly woman whom she did not know should wish to say something, yet she strongly felt that this was so. Then Miss Doheny returned her attention to what the other old woman was saying.
When they’d finished the drinks that Beatrice’s companion had just fetched they moved from the table they were at and sat on two bar-stools, listening to Francis Keegan telling them about the annual liveliness in the hotel on the night of the April point-to-point. Mrs Keegan appeared at his side and recalled an occasion when Willie Kincart had ridden the horse he’d won the last race on into the hall of the hotel and how old Packy Briscoe had imagined he’d caught the d.t.’s when he looked down from the top of the stairs. And there was the story – before Mrs Keegan’s time, as she was swift to point out – when Jack Doyle and Movita had stayed in Keegan’s, when just for the hell of it Jack Doyle had chased a honeymoon couple up Castle Hill, half naked from their bed. After several further drinks, Beatrice began to laugh. She felt much less forlorn now that the faces of Francis Keegan and his wife were beginning to float agreeably in her vision. When she looked at the elderly trio in the corner, the only other people in the lounge, their faces floated also.
The thin old man came to the bar for more drinks and cigarettes. He nodded and smiled at Beatrice; he remarked upon the weather. ‘Mr Meldrum,’ said Francis Keegan by way of introduction. ‘How d’you do,’ Beatrice said.
Her companion yawned and appeared to be suggesting that they should go to bed. Beatrice took no notice. She pushed her glass at Francis Keegan, reaching for her handbag and announcing that it was her round. ‘A drink for everyone,’ she said, aware that when she gestured towards the Keegans and the elderly trio she almost lost her balance. She giggled. ‘Definitely my round,’ she slurred, giggling again.
Mrs Keegan told another story, about a commercial traveller called Artie Logan who had become drunk in his room and had sent down for so many trays of tea and buttered bread that every cup and saucer in the hotel had been carried up to him. ‘They said to thank you,’ her husband passed on, returning from the elderly trio’s table. Beatrice turned her head. All three of them were looking at her, their faces still slipping about a bit. Their glasses were raised in her direction. ‘Good luck,’ the old man called out.
It was then that Beatrice realized. She looked from face to face, making herself smile to acknowledge the good wishes she was being offered, the truth she sensed seeming to emerge from a blur of features and clothes and three raised glasses. She nodded, and saw the heads turn away again. It had remained unstated: the love that was there had never in any way been exposed. In this claustrophobic town, in this very lounge, there had
