‘Cat has your man leppin’ tonight,’ Tim Daly remarked to Patty Byrne, for the liveliness that Cat Bolger had introduced into foxtrot and waltz was noticeable.
‘I think of you only,’ sang Dano Ryan. ‘Only wishing, wishing you were by my side.’
Dano Ryan would have done, Bridie often thought, because he was a different kind of bachelor: he had a lonely look about him, as if he’d become tired of being on his own. Every week she thought he would have done, and during the week her mind regularly returned to that thought. Dano Ryan would have done because she felt he wouldn’t mind coming to live in the farmhouse while her one-legged father was still about the place. Three could live as cheaply as two where Dano Ryan was concerned because giving up the wages he earned as a road-worker would be balanced by the saving made on what he paid for lodgings. Once, at the end of an evening, she’d pretended that there was a puncture in the back wheel of her bicycle and he’d concerned himself with it while Mr Maloney and Mr Swanton waited for him in Mr Maloney’s car. He’d blown the tyre up with the car pump and had said he thought it would hold.
It was well known in the dance-hall that she fancied her chances with Dano Ryan. But it was well known also that Dano Ryan had got into a set way of life and had remained in it for quite some years. He lodged with a widow called Mrs Griffin and Mrs Griffin’s mentally affected son, in a cottage on the outskirts of the town. He was said to be good to the affected child, buying him sweets and taking him out for rides on the crossbar of his bicycle. He gave an hour or two of his time every week to the Church of Our Lady Queen of Heaven, and he was loyal to Mr Dwyer. He performed in the two other rural dance-halls that Mr Dwyer owned, rejecting advances from the town’s more sophisticated dance-hall, even though it was more conveniently situated for him and the fee was more substantial than that paid by Mr Dwyer. But Mr Dwyer had discovered Dano Ryan and Dano had not forgotten it, just as Mr Maloney and Mr Swanton had not forgotten their discovery by Mr Dwyer either.
‘Would we take a lemonade?’ Bowser Egan suggested. ‘And a packet of biscuits, Bridie?’
No alcoholic liquor was ever served in the Ballroom of Romance, the premises not being licensed for this added stimulant. Mr Dwyer in fact had never sought a licence for any of his premises, knowing that romance and alcohol were difficult commodities to mix, especially in a dignified ballroom. Behind where the girls sat on the wooden chairs Mr Dwyer’s wife, a small stout woman, served the bottles of lemonade, with straws, and the biscuits, and crisps. She talked busily while doing so, mainly about the turkeys she kept. She’d once told Bridie that she thought of them as children.
‘Thanks,’ Bridie said, and Bowser Egan led her to the trestle table. Soon it would be the intermission: soon the three members of the band would cross the floor also for refreshment. She thought up questions to ask Dano Ryan.
When first she’d danced in the Ballroom of Romance, when she was just sixteen, Dano Ryan had been there also, four years older than she was, playing the drums for Mr Maloney as he played them now. She’d hardly noticed him then because of his not being one of the dancers: he was part of the ballroom’s scenery, like the trestle table and the lemonade bottles, and Mrs Dwyer and Mr Dwyer. The youths who’d danced with her then in their Saturday-night blue suits had later disappeared into the town, or to Dublin or Britain, leaving behind them those who became the middle-aged bachelors of the hills. There’d been a boy called Patrick Grady whom she had loved in those days. Week after week she’d ridden away from the Ballroom of Romance with the image of his face in her mind, a thin face, pale beneath black hair. It had been different, dancing with Patrick Grady, and she’d felt that he found it different dancing with her, although he’d never said so. At night she’d dreamed of him and in the daytime too, while she helped her mother in the kitchen or her father with the cows. Week by week she’d returned to the ballroom, delighting in its pink facade and dancing in the arms of Patrick Grady. Often they’d stood together drinking lemonade, not saying anything, not knowing what to say. She knew he loved her, and she believed then that he would lead her one day from the dim, romantic ballroom, from its blueness and its pinkness and its crystal bowl of light and its music. She believed he would lead her into sunshine, to the town and the Church of Our Lady Queen of Heaven, to marriage and smiling faces. But someone else had got Patrick Grady, a girl from the town who’d never danced in the wayside ballroom. She’d scooped up Patrick Grady when he didn’t have a chance.
Bridie had wept, hearing that. By night she’d lain in her bed in the farmhouse, quietly crying, the tears rolling into her hair and making the pillow damp. When she woke in the early morning the thought was still naggingly with her and it remained with her by day, replacing her daytime dreams of happiness. Someone told her later on that he’d crossed to Britain, to Wolverhampton, with the girl he’d married, and she imagined him there, in a place she wasn’t able properly to visualize, labouring in a factory, his children being born and acquiring the accent of the area. The Ballroom of Romance wasn’t the same without him, and when no one else stood out for her particularly over the years and when no one offered her marriage, she found herself wondering about Dano Ryan. If you couldn’t have love, the next best thing was surely a decent man.
Bowser Egan hardly fell into that category, nor did Tim Daly. And it was plain to everyone that Cat Bolger and Madge Dowding were wasting their time over the man with the long arms. Madge Dowding was already a figure of fun in the ballroom, the way she ran after the bachelors; Cat Bolger would end up the same if she wasn’t careful. One way or another it wasn’t difficult to be a figure of fun in the ballroom, and you didn’t have to be as old as Madge Dowding: a girl who’d just left the Presentation Nuns had once asked Eyes Horgan what he had in his trouser pocket and he told her it was a penknife. She’d repeated this afterwards in the cloakroom, how she’d requested Eyes Horgan not to dance so close to her because his penknife was sticking into her. ‘Jeez, aren’t you the right baby!’ Patty Byrne had shouted delightedly; everyone had laughed, knowing that Eyes Horgan only came to the ballroom for stuff like that. He was no use to any girl.
‘Two lemonades, Mrs Dwyer,’ Bowser Egan said, ‘and two packets of Kerry Creams. Is Kerry Creams all right, Bridie?’
She nodded, smiling. Kerry Creams would be fine, she said.
‘Well, Bridie, isn’t that the great outfit you have!’ Mrs Dwyer remarked. ‘Doesn’t the red suit her, Bowser?’
By the swing-doors stood Mr Dwyer, smoking a cigarette that he held cupped in his left hand. His small eyes noted all developments. He had been aware of Madge Dowding’s anxiety when Eyes Horgan had inserted two fingers into the back opening of her dress. He had looked away, not caring for the incident, but had it developed further he would have spoken to Eyes Horgan, as he had on other occasions. Some of the younger lads didn’t know any better and would dance very close to their partners, who generally were too embarrassed to do anything about it, being young themselves. But that, in Mr Dwyer’s opinion, was a different kettle of fish altogether because they were decent young lads who’d in no time at all be doing a steady line with a girl and would end up as he had himself with Mrs Dwyer, in the same house with her, sleeping in a bed with her, firmly married. It was the middle-aged bachelors who required the watching: they came down from the hills like mountain goats, released from their mammies and from the smell of animals and soil. Mr Dwyer continued to watch Eyes Horgan, wondering how drunk he was.
Dano Ryan’s song came to an end, Mr Swanton laid down his clarinet, Mr Maloney rose from the piano. Dano Ryan wiped sweat from his face and the three men slowly moved towards Mrs Dwyer’s trestle table.
‘Jeez, you have powerful legs,’ Eyes Horgan whispered to Madge Dowding, but Madge Dowding’s attention
