She did not ask about Agnew. She could not see him being absorbed into the turf business or the coal business, and in any case Cathal didn’t like him. Cathal would have him out on the street while you’d wink.
Cathal had his father’s wedge of a head, his forehead and wide-apart, narrow eyes. He was the first of their children to be born, the one who had received most attention because the others were girls. Heir to so much, he had been claimed by a thrusting entrepreneur’s world from infancy. The girls, except for Siobhan in Philadelphia, had been more mundanely claimed by men.
She wouldn’t have minded any of the others being in Arcangelo House, but Thelma had a greedy way of looking at her, as if she couldn’t wait to get into the place. Mrs O’Neill dearly wished that her son hadn’t married this girl, but he had and that was that. She sighed as she replaced the receiver, seeing Thelma’s slightly puffy face, her nose too small for the rest of it. She sat for a moment longer, endeavouring to release her imagination of that face and in the end succeeding. Then she dressed herself and went down to the toy factory. Agnew was in the inner office, standing by the window, his back to her as she entered.
‘Mr Agnew.’
‘Ah, Mrs O’Neill. Come in, come in, Mrs O’Neill.’ He moved so swiftly in turning to greet her that she was reminded of the assured way he danced the quickstep. He came every December to the Golf Club Dance even though he was not a club member and had once confided to her that he had never played the game. ‘Croquet,’ he’d confided also. ‘I used to be quite snappy at croquet.’ He had his own expressions, a way of putting things that sometimes sounded odd. Typical that he should mention an old-fashioned game like croquet.
‘I hope you’re not busy, Mr Agnew. I’m not disturbing you, am I?’
‘Heavens above, why would you be? Won’t you take a chair, Mrs O’Neill? A cup of tea now?’
There was always this formality. He offered it and seemed shyly to demand it. Her husband had always used his surname, and so did Cathal; at the Golf Club Dance she’d heard other men call him by his initials, B.J. She couldn’t in a million years imagine him addressing her as Norah.
‘No, I won’t have tea, thank you.’
‘A taste of sherry at all? I have a nice sweet little sherry –’
‘No, thanks. Really, Mr Agnew.’
He smiled, gently closing a glass-fronted cabinet he had opened in expectation of her accepting his hospitality. He was wearing a brown suit chalked with a pinstripe, and a green silk tie. He said:
‘Well, it seems we have come to the end of the road.’
‘I know. I’m awfully sorry.’
‘Mr O’Neill saw it coming years ago.’
‘Yes, I’m afraid he did.’
He smiled again; his voice was unperturbed. ‘The first day I came up to Arcangelo House I was terrified out of my wits. D’you remember, Mrs O’Neill? Your husband had an advertisement for the job in the
‘It seems an age ago.’
‘Doesn’t it, though? An age.’
His face had acquired a meditative expression. He drew a packet of cigarettes from a pocket of his jacket and opened it slowly, folding back the silver paper. He advanced a single cigarette by knocking the packet on the surface of his desk. He leaned towards her, offering it. His wrists were slim: she had never noticed his wrists before.
‘Thank you, Mr Agnew.’
He leaned across the desk again, holding the flame of a cigarette-lighter to the tip of her cigarette. It gleamed with the dull patina of gold, as slender as a coin.
‘No, I don’t entirely know what I’ll do.’ He lit his own cigarette and then held it, dangling, in his long fingers.
‘Cathal should have something for you. It was my husband’s intention, you know, that everyone at the toy factory should be offered something.’
She wanted to make that clear; she wanted to record this unequivocal statement in the inner office so that later on, if necessary, she could quote herself to Cathal. She inhaled some smoke and released it luxuriously through her nostrils. She was fond of the occasional cigarette, although she never smoked when she was on her own.
‘I’m not so sure I’d entirely fit in, Mrs O’Neill. I don’t know anything about selling turf.’
She mentioned coal, which after all was the fuel that had made the O’Neills wealthy. There was still a thriving coal business, the biggest in the county.
He shook his head. His hair, once black, was almost completely grey now. ‘I don’t think,’ he said, ‘I’d be at home in coal.’
‘Well, I only thought I’d mention it.’
‘It’s more than kind, Mrs O’Neill.’
‘My husband wouldn’t have wanted anyone not looked after.’
‘Oh, indeed I know it.’
She stared at the lipstick mark on her cigarette and then raised the cigarette to her mouth again. It was awkward because she didn’t want to walk out of the factory smoking a cigarette, yet it was too soon to crush it out on the ashtray in front of her.
‘If there’s any way the family can help, you’ll say, Mr Agnew?’
