‘It’s hard for the poor woman. A builder’s widow.’ Mrs Plunkett explained to me what I already knew. ‘He fell off a roof six weeks ago.’
‘As a matter of fact,’ Hubert said, ‘she’s better off without him.’
‘What on earth d’you mean, Hubert?’
‘Hanrahan went after shop girls. Famous for it.’
‘Don’t speak so coarsely, Hubert.’
‘Is Pam shocked? Are you shocked, Pam?’
‘No, no, not at all.’ Pamela swiftly replied before her grandmother could answer for her. She had reddened again in her confusion, but being flustered made her more vivacious and was not unattractive.
‘Mr Hanrahan was a perfectly decent man,’ Mrs Plunkett insisted. ‘You’re repeating tittle-tattle, Hubert.’
‘There’s a girl serves in Binchy’s, another in Edwards’ the cake shop. Hanrahan took both of them to the dunes. D’you remember Hanrahan, Pam?’
She shook her head.
‘He painted the drain-pipes one time.’
‘You’ll need to hurry if you wish to catch the train,’ Mrs Plunkett said. As she spoke she drew back the cuff of her sleeve to consult a wristwatch that had not been visible before. She nodded in agreement with the statement she’d just made. Addressing her granddaughter, she said:
‘It doesn’t matter if you don’t finish.’
Doubtfully, Pamela half smiled at Mrs Plunkett. She began to say something, then changed her mind. Vaguely, she shook her head.
‘Is Pamela going in to Dublin too?’ Hubert said. ‘Going to the flicks, Pamela?’
‘Isn’t she accompanying you? Don’t you want to go dancing with the boys, Pamela?’
‘No, no.’ She shook her head, more vehemently than before. She was going to wash her hair, she said.
‘But surely you’d like to go dancing, Pamela?’
Hubert stood up, half a piece of shortbread in one hand. He jerked his head at me, indicating that I should hurry. Pamela said again that she wanted to wash her hair.
‘Jesus Christ!’ Hubert murmured in the hall. He stifled laughter. ‘I’m bloody certain,’ he said as we hurried through the garden, ‘she remembers Hanrahan. The man made a pass at her.’
In the train he told me when I asked that she was the child of his father’s sister. ‘She comes over every summer from some back-of-beyond rectory in Roscommon.’ He was vague when I asked further questions, or else impatiently brushed them aside. ‘Pam’s dreary,’ was all he said.
‘She doesn’t seem dreary to me.’
‘The old man worships her. Like he did her mother by all accounts.’
In the Four Provinces Ballroom we met girls who were quite different from Hubert’s cousin. Hubert said they came from the slums, though this could not have been true since they were fashionably dressed and had money for soft drinks and cigarettes. Their legs were painted – the liquid stockings of that time – and their features were emphasized with lipstick and mascara. But each one I danced with was either stunted or lumpy, and I kept thinking of Pamela’s slim figure and her pretty face. Her lips, in particular, I remembered.
We danced to ‘As Time Goes By’ and ‘Autumn Leaves’ and ‘Falling in Love with Love’. The Inkspots sang. One of the partners I danced with said: ‘Your friend’s very handsome, isn’t he?’
In the end Hubert picked up two girls who were agreeable to being seen home when the evening came to an end.
Ken Mackintosh and his band began to pack away their instruments. We walked a little way along Harcourt Street and caught a number 11 bus. The girls were nurses. The one allocated to me, being bouncy and talkative, wanted to know what it was like living in a provincial town, as I did, and what my plans were for getting out of it. When I told her she said: ‘Maybe I’ll run into you when you’re a student,’ but her voice wasn’t exactly loaded with pleasurable anticipation. She was wearing a thick, green woollen coat even though it was August. Her face was flat and pale, her lips garish beneath a fresh coating of lipstick. She had to get up at five o’clock every morning, she said, in order to get to the ward on time. The Sister was a tartar.
When we arrived at the girls’ flat Hubert suggested that we might be offered a cup of tea, but the girls would permit us no further than the doorstep of the house. ‘I thought we were away,’ he murmured disconsolately. His father would have got in, he said. They’d have cooked a meal for his father, anything he wanted. We walked to where we hoped to get a lift to Templemairt. Two hours later a lorry driver picked us up.
The next day being a Saturday, Hubert and I went to Phoenix Park races. We missed breakfast and due to pressure of time we missed lunch also – and, in fact, the first race. ‘The old man’ll have been livid,’ Hubert said. ‘You understand he takes in what’s going on?’ Mrs Plunkett and Pamela would have sat waiting for us in the dining-room, he said, then Pamela would have been sent up to see if we were still asleep, and after that Mrs Plunkett would have gone up herself. ‘They’ll have asked Lily and she’ll have told them we’ve hooked it to the races.’ He neither laughed nor smiled, even though he seemed amused. Another two pounds had been borrowed from Lily before we left.
‘He’ll be livid because he’ll think we should have taken Pam with us.’
‘Why don’t you like Pamela?’
Hubert didn’t reply. He said instead: ‘I’d love to have heard Hanrahan putting a proposition to her.’
At school all of it would have sounded different. We’d have laughed – I more than anyone – at the report of the lively builder attempting to seduce Hubert’s cousin. And somehow it would have been funnier because this had occurred in his grandfather’s house, his grandfather being the sort he was. We would have imagined the embarrassment of Hubert’s cousin, and Hanrahan saying what harm was a little kiss. We would have imagined the old man oblivious of it all, and would have laughed because Hubert’s cousin couldn’t bring herself to say anything
