was on the man with the long arms, who had left Cat Bolger’s side and was proceeding in the direction of the men’s lavatory. He never took refreshments. She moved, herself, towards the men’s lavatory, to take up a position outside it, but Eyes Horgan followed her. ‘Would you take a lemonade, Madge?’ he asked. He had a small bottle of whiskey on him: if they went into a corner they could add a drop of it to the lemonade. She didn’t drink spirits, she reminded him, and he went away.
‘Excuse me a minute,’ Bowser Egan said, putting down his bottle of lemonade. He crossed the floor to the lavatory. He too, Bridie knew, would have a small bottle of whiskey on him. She watched while Dano Ryan, listening to a story Mr Maloney was telling, paused in the centre of the ballroom, his head bent to hear what was being said. He was a big man, heavily made; with black hair that was slightly touched with grey, and big hands. He laughed when Mr Maloney came to the end of his story and then bent his head again, in order to listen to a story told by Mr Swanton.
‘Are you on your own, Bridie?’ Cat Bolger asked, and Bridie said she was waiting for Bowser Egan.
Younger boys and girls stood with their arms still around one another, queuing up for refreshments. Boys who hadn’t danced at all, being nervous because they didn’t know any steps, stood in groups, smoking and making jokes. Girls who hadn’t been danced with yet talked to one another, their eyes wandering. Some of them sucked at straws in lemonade bottles.
Bridie, still watching Dano Ryan, imagined him wearing the glasses he’d referred to, sitting in the farmhouse kitchen, reading one of her father’s Wild West novels. She imagined the three of them eating a meal she’d prepared, fried eggs and rashers and fried potato-cakes, and tea and bread and butter and jam, brown bread and soda and shop bread. She imagined Dano Ryan leaving the kitchen in the morning to go out to the fields in order to weed the mangolds, and her father hobbling off behind him, and the two men working together. She saw hay being cut, Dano Ryan with the scythe that she’d learned to use herself, her father using a rake as best he could. She saw herself, because of the extra help, being able to attend to things in the farmhouse, things she’d never had time for because of the cows and the hens and the fields. There were bedroom curtains that needed repairing where the net had ripped, and wallpaper that had become loose and needed to be stuck up with flour paste. The scullery required whitewashing.
The night he’d blown up the tyre of her bicycle she’d thought he was going to kiss her. He’d crouched on the ground in the darkness with his ear to the tyre, listening for escaping air. When he could hear none he’d straightened up and said he thought she’d be all right on the bicycle. His face had been quite close to hers and she’d smiled at him. At that moment, unfortunately, Mr Maloney had blown an impatient blast on the horn of his motor-car.
Often she’d been kissed by Bowser Egan, on the nights when he insisted on riding part of the way home with her. They had to dismount in order to push their bicycles up a hill and the first time he’d accompanied her he’d contrived to fall against her, steadying himself by putting a hand on her shoulder. The next thing she was aware of was the moist quality of his lips and the sound of his bicycle as it clattered noisily on the road. He’d suggested then, regaining his breath, that they should go into a field.
That was nine years ago. In the intervening passage of time she’d been kissed as well, in similar circumstances, by Eyes Horgan and Tim Daly. She’d gone into fields with them and permitted them to put their arms about her while heavily they breathed. At one time or another she had imagined marriage with one or other of them, seeing them in the farmhouse with her father, even though the fantasies were unlikely.
Bridie stood with Cat Bolger, knowing that it would be some time before Bowser Egan came out of the lavatory. Mr Maloney, Mr Swanton and Dano Ryan approached, Mr Maloney insisting that he would fetch three bottles of lemonade from the trestle table.
‘You sang the last one beautifully,’ Bridie said to Dano Ryan. ‘Isn’t it a beautiful song?’
Mr Swanton said it was the finest song ever written, and Cat Bolger said she preferred ‘Danny Boy’, which in her opinion was the finest song ever written.
‘Take a suck of that,’ said Mr Maloney, handing Dano Ryan and Mr Swanton bottles of lemonade. ‘How’s Bridie tonight? Is your father well, Bridie?’
Her father was all right, she said.
‘I hear they’re starting a cement factory,’ said Mr Maloney. ‘Did anyone hear talk of that? They’re after striking some commodity in the earth that makes good cement. Ten feet down, over at Kilmalough.’
‘It’ll bring employment,’ said Mr Swanton. ‘It’s employment that’s necessary in this area.’
‘Canon O’Connell was on about it,’ Mr Maloney said. ‘There’s Yankee money involved.’
‘Will the Yanks come over?’ inquired Cat Bolger. ‘Will they run it themselves, Mr Maloney?’
Mr Maloney, intent on his lemonade, didn’t hear the questions and Cat Bolger didn’t repeat them.
‘There’s stuff called Optrex,’ Bridie said quietly to Dano Ryan, ‘that my father took the time he had a cold in his eyes. Maybe Optrex would settle the watering, Dano.’
‘Ah sure, it doesn’t worry me that much –’
‘It’s terrible, anything wrong with the eyes. You wouldn’t want to take a chance. You’d get Optrex in a chemist, Dano, and a little bowl with it so that you can bathe the eyes.’
Her father’s eyes had become red-rimmed and unsightly to look at. She’d gone into Riordan’s Medical Hall in the town and had explained what the trouble was, and Mr Riordan had recommended Optrex. She told this to Dano Ryan, adding that her father had had no trouble with his eyes since. Dano Ryan nodded.
‘Did you hear that, Mrs Dwyer?’ Mr Maloney called out. ‘A cement factory for Kilmalough.’
Mrs Dwyer wagged her head, placing empty bottles in a crate. She’d heard references to the cement factory, she said: it was the best news for a long time.
‘Kilmalough won’t know itself,’ her husband commented, joining her in her task with the empty lemonade bottles.
‘’Twill bring prosperity certainly,’ said Mr Swanton. ‘I was saying just there, Justin, that employment’s what’s necessary.’
‘Sure, won’t the Yanks –’ began Cat Bolger, but Mr Maloney interrupted her.
