‘Just Barney?’
‘Barney Gregory.’
Again she nodded. They walked in silence. He said:
‘Will you always help your mother in the house?’
‘What else would I do?’
He didn’t know. He wanted to suggest some work that was worthy of her, something better than carrying trays of food to the dining-room and sweeping the stair-carpet. Even work in a shop was more dignified than what she did, but he did not mention a shop. ‘Perhaps a nurse.’
‘I would be frightened to be a nurse. I’d be no good at it.’
‘I’m sure you would, Ariadne.’
She would care tenderly. Her gentleness would be a blessing. Her beauty would cheer the low spirits of the ill.
‘Nuns are better at all that,’ she said.
‘Did you go to a convent, Ariadne?’
She nodded, and for a moment seemed lost in the memory the question inspired. When she spoke again her voice, for the first time, was eager. ‘Will we walk to the convent, Barney? It isn’t far away.’
‘If you would like to.’
‘We have to turn right when we come to Prussia Street,’
No one was about. The front doors of the houses they walked by were tightly closed against the world. Their footsteps were deadened by the sodden leaves.
‘I like that colour you wear,’ he said.
‘An aunt left me her clothes.’
‘An aunt?’
‘A great-aunt, Aunt Loretta. Half of them she never wore. She loved that colour.’
‘It suits you.’
‘She used to say that.’
That was why her dresses, and the coat she wore now, were rather long for her. It was her clothes that gave her her old-fashioned air. Had she no clothes of her own? he wondered, but did not ask.
The convent was a cement building with silver-coloured railings in front of it. The blinds were drawn down in several of its windows; lace curtains ensured privacy in the others. A brass letter-box and knocker gleamed on a green side-door.
‘Did you walk here every morning?’ he asked.
‘When I was small my father used to take me. It wasn’t out of his way.’
She went on talking about that, and he formed a picture of her childhood, just as, a few moments ago, she had of his. He saw her, hand in hand with her father, hurrying through the early-morning streets. Her father had worked in Maguire’s coal office in Easter Street. Sometimes they’d call in at a shop for his tobacco, half an ounce of Digger.
When they crossed the street he wanted to take her arm, but he didn’t have the courage. They could walk to a bus stop, he suggested, and wait for a bus to O’Connell Street. They could have tea somewhere, one of the cinema cafes that were open on a Sunday. But she shook her head. She’d have to be getting back, she said.
They turned and walked the way they’d come, past the silent houses. A drizzle began. They didn’t say much else.
*
‘God, there’s talent for you!’ Medlicott exclaimed in the Crystal Ballroom, surveying the girls who stood against the walls. Slovinski conveyed a willowy woman of uncertain age on to the dance-floor, from which, a few minutes later, they disappeared and did not return. Some of the girls who were standing about glanced back at Medlicott, clearly considering him handsome. He approached a lean-featured one with hair the colour of newly polished brass, not at all pretty, Barney considered.
Because he had no knowledge of dance-steps, the partners Barney chose usually excused themselves after a minute or two. ‘What line are you in?’ a plump one, more tolerant than the others, inquired. He said he worked in a dry-cleaner’s, Slovinski having warned him not to mention being a student in case the girls took fright. ‘You can’t dance,’ the plump girl observed, and commenced to teach him.
When the end of the evening came she was still doing so. Medlicott had remained attached to the lean- featured girl, whom he confidently reported he had ‘got going’. Outside the dance-hall Barney heard him complimenting her on her eyes, and felt embarrassed because he didn’t want to have to tell the plump girl that she, too, had lovely eyes, which wouldn’t have been true. Instead, he asked heir her name. ‘May,’ she said.
Medlicott suggested that they should go out to Goatstown in a taxi, since the city bars were closed by now. There were fields in Goatstown, he reminded his companions: after they’d had a couple of nightcaps they could go for a walk through the fields in the moonlight. But May said her father would skin her if she got in late. She took Barney’s arm. Her father was fierce-tempered, she confided.
The lean-faced girl didn’t want to make the journey to Goatstown either, so Medlicott led her into an alleyway. They kissed one another in a doorway while May and Barney stood some distance away. When her father went wild, May said, nothing could hold him. ‘All right,’ Barney heard the lean-faced girl say.
A battered Ford car was parked at the far end of the alleyway next to a skip full of builder’s rubble. Medlicott and his companion approached it, she teetering on gold-coloured high heels. Medlicott opened one of the back doors. ‘Come on in here, darling,’ he invited.
