play much any more. They shared memories, and likes and dislikes, that had to do with the tennis club; there were photographs that once in a blue moon were sentimentally mulled over; friendships had grown closer or apart. Billy MacGuinness had always been the same, determinedly a winner at fourteen and determinedly a winner at forty-five. Francie, who’d married him when it had seemed that he might marry Trish, was a winner also: Trish had made do with Tom Crosbie. There’d been quarrels at the tennis club: a great row in 1961 when Desmond’s father had wanted to raise money for a hard court and resigned in a huff when no one agreed; and nearly ten years later there had been the quarrel between Laverty and Dr Timothy Sweeney which had resulted in both their resignations, all to do with a dispute about a roller. There were jealousies and gossip, occasionally both envy and resentment. The years had been less kind to some while favouring others; the children born to the couples of the tennis club were often compared, though rarely openly, in terms of achievement or promise. Tea was taken, supplied by the wives, on Saturday afternoons from May to September. The men supplied drinks on that one day of the week also, and even washed up the glasses. The children of the tennis club tasted their first cocktails there, Billy MacGuinness’s White Ladies and Sidecars.
A handful of the tennis-club wives were best friends, and had been since their convent days: Grania and Mavis, Francie, Helen, Trish. They trusted one another, doing so more easily now than they had when they’d been at the convent together or in the days when each of them might possibly have married one of the others’ husbands. They told one another most things, confessing their errors and their blunders; they comforted and were a solace, jollying away feelings of inadequacy or guilt. Trish had worried at the convent because her breasts wouldn’t grow, Helen because her face was scrawny and her lips too thin. Francie had almost died when a lorry had knocked her off her bicycle. Mavis had agonized for months before she said yes to Martin Duddy. As girls, they had united in their criticism of girls outside their circle; as wives they had not changed.
‘I heard about that guy,’ Mavis said. ‘So that’s what he looks like.’
That August Saturday in 1972 he’d come to the tennis club on a bicycle, in whites he had borrowed at the house where he was staying, a racquet tied with string to the crossbar. He’d told Grania afterwards that Hetty Prendergast had looked the whites out for him and had lent him the racquet as well. Hetty had mentioned the tennis club, to which she and her husband had years ago belonged themselves. ‘Of course a different kind of lot these days,’ she’d said. ‘Like everywhere.’ He’d pushed the bicycle through the gate and stood there watching a doubles game, not yet untying his racquet. ‘Who on earth’s that?’ someone had said, and Grania approached him after about a quarter of an hour, since she was at that time the club’s secretary and vaguely felt it to be her duty.
Sipping the Martini Mavis had claimed to owe her, Grania remembered the sudden turning of his profile in her direction when she spoke and then his smile. Nothing of what she subsequently planned had entered her head then; she would have been stunned by even the faintest inkling of it. ‘I’m awfully sorry,’ he’d said. ‘I’m barging in.’
Grania had been twenty-seven then, married to Desmond for almost eight years. Now she was forty-three, and her cool brown eyes still strikingly complemented the lips that Desmond had once confessed he’d wanted to kiss ever since she was twelve. Her dark hair had been in plaits at twelve, later had been fashionably long, and now was short. She wasn’t tall and had always wished she was, but at least she didn’t have to slim. She hadn’t become a mother yet, that Saturday afternoon when the stranger arrived at the tennis club. But she was happy, and in love with Desmond.
‘Aisling’s going out with some chartered accountant,’ Mavis said, speaking about her daughter. ‘Martin’s hopping mad.’
The Quiltys arrived. Grania watched while they joined Desmond and their dinner guest. Desmond moved to the bar to buy them drinks. Quilty – a small man who reminded Grania of a monkey – lit a cigarette. Politely, Grania transferred her attention to her friend. Why should Martin be angry? she asked, genuinely not knowing. She could tell from Mavis’s tone of voice that she was not displeased herself.
‘Because he’s nine years older. We had a letter from Aisling this morning. Martin’s talking about going up to have it out with her.’
‘That might make it worse, actually.’
‘If he mentions it will you tell him that? He listens to you, you know.’
Grania said she would. She knew Martin Duddy would mention it, since he always seemed to want to talk to her about things that upset him. Once upon a time, just before she’d become engaged to Desmond, he’d tried to persuade her he loved her.
‘They earn a fortune,’ Mavis said. ‘Chartered accountants.’
Soon after that they all began to move into the Rhett Butler Room. Grania could just remember the time when the hotel had been called O’Hara’s Commercial, in the days of Mr and Mrs O’Hara. It wasn’t all that long ago that their sons, giving the place another face-lift as soon as they inherited it, had decided to change the name to the Tara and to give the previously numbered bedrooms titles such as ‘Ashley’s’ and ‘Melanie’s’. The bar was known as Scarlett’s Lounge. There were regular discos in Belle’s Place.
‘Who’s that fellow with the Quiltys?’ Francie MacGuinness asked, and Grania told her.
‘He’s come back for Hetty Prendergast’s funeral.’
‘God, I didn’t know she died.’
As always, several tables had been pushed together to form a single long one in the centre of the dining- room. At it, the couples who’d been drinking in the bar sat as they wished: there was no formality. Una Carty- Carroll, Trish Crosbie’s sister, was unmarried but was usually partnered on these Saturday occasions by the surveyor from the waterworks. This was so tonight. At one end of the table a place remained unoccupied: Angela, outside the circle of best friends, as Una Carty-Carroll and Mary Ann Haddon were, invariably came late. In a distant corner of the Rhett Butler Room one other couple were dining. Another table, recently occupied, was being tidied.
‘I think it’s Monday,’ Grania said when Francie asked her when the funeral was.
She hoped he’d go away again immediately. That other Saturday he’d said he found it appallingly dull at the Prendergasts’, a call of duty, no reason in the world why he should ever return. His reassurances had in a way been neither here nor there at the time, but afterwards of course she’d recalled them. Afterwards, many times, she’d strained to establish every single word of the conversation they’d had.
‘D’you remember poor old Hetty,’ Francie said, ‘coming in to the club for a cup of tea once? Ages ago.’
‘Yes, I remember her.’
A small woman, they remembered, a frail look about her face. There was another occasion Francie recalled:
