‘The Yanks’ll be in at the top, Cat, or maybe not here at all – maybe only inserting money into it. It’ll be local labour entirely.’
‘You’ll not marry a Yank, Cat,’ said Mr Swanton, loudly laughing. ‘You can’t catch those fellows.’
‘Haven’t you plenty of homemade bachelors?’ suggested Mr Maloney. He laughed also, throwing away the straw he was sucking through and tipping the bottle into his mouth. Cat Bolger told him to get on with himself. She moved towards the men’s lavatory and took up a position outside it, not speaking to Madge Dowding, who was still standing there.
‘Keep a watch on Eyes Horgan,’ Mrs Dwyer warned her husband, which was advice she gave him at this time every Saturday night, knowing that Eyes Horgan was drinking in the lavatory. When he was drunk Eyes Horgan was the most difficult of the bachelors.
‘I have a drop of it left, Dano,’ Bridie said quietly. ‘I could bring it over on Saturday. The eye stuff.’
‘Ah, don’t worry yourself, Bridie –’
‘No trouble at all. Honestly now –’
‘Mrs Griffin has me fixed up for a test with Dr Cready. The old eyes are no worry, only when I’m reading the paper or at the pictures. Mrs Griffin says I’m only straining them due to lack of glasses.’
He looked away while he said that, and she knew at once that Mrs Griffin was arranging to marry him. She felt it instinctively: Mrs Griffin was going to marry him because she was afraid that if he moved away from her cottage, to get married to someone else, she’d find it hard to replace him with another lodger who’d be good to her affected son. He’d become a father to Mrs Griffin’s affected son, to whom already he was kind. It was a natural outcome, for Mrs Griffin had all the chances, seeing him every night and morning and not having to make do with weekly encounters in a ballroom.
She thought of Patrick Grady, seeing in her mind his pale, thin face. She might be the mother of four of his children now, or seven or eight maybe. She might be living in Wolverhampton, going out to the pictures in the evenings, instead of looking after a one-legged man. If the weight of circumstances hadn’t intervened she wouldn’t be standing in a wayside ballroom, mourning the marriage of a road-mender she didn’t love. For a moment she thought she might cry, standing there thinking of Patrick Grady in Wolverhampton. In her life, on the farm and in the house, there was no place for tears. Tears were a luxury, like flowers would be in the fields where the mangolds grew, or fresh whitewash in the scullery. It wouldn’t have been fair ever to have wept in the kitchen while her father sat listening to
In the Ballroom of Romance she felt behind her eyes the tears that it would have been improper to release in the presence of her father. She wanted to let them go, to feel them streaming on her cheeks, to receive the sympathy of Dano Ryan and of everyone else. She wanted them all to listen to her while she told them about Patrick Grady who was now in Wolverhampton and about the death of her mother and her own life since. She wanted Dano Ryan to put his arm around her so that she could lean her head against it. She wanted him to look at her in his decent way and to stroke with his road-mender’s fingers the backs of her hands. She might wake in a bed with him and imagine for a moment that he was Patrick Grady. She might bathe his eyes and pretend.
‘Back to business,’ said Mr Maloney, leading his band across the floor to their instruments.
‘Tell your father I was asking for him,’ Dano Ryan said. She smiled and she promised, as though nothing had happened, that she would tell her father that.
She danced with Tim Daly and then again with the youth who’d said he intended to emigrate. She saw Madge Dowding moving swiftly towards the man with the long arms as he came out of the lavatory, moving faster than Cat Bolger. Eyes Horgan approached Cat Bolger. Dancing with her, he spoke earnestly, attempting to persuade her to permit him to ride part of the way home with her. He was unaware of the jealousy that was coming from her as she watched Madge Dowding holding close to her the man with the long arms while they performed a quickstep. Cat Bolger was in her thirties also.
‘Get away out of that,’ said Bowser Egan, cutting in on the youth who was dancing with Bridie. ‘Go home to your mammy, boy.’ He took her into his arms, saying again that she was looking great tonight. ‘Did you hear about the cement factory?’ he said. ‘Isn’t it great for Kilmalough?’
She agreed. She said what Mr Swanton and Mr Maloney had said: that the cement factory would bring employment to the neighbourhood.
‘Will I ride home with you a bit, Bridie?’ Bowser Egan suggested, and she pretended not to hear him. ‘Aren’t you my girl, Bridie, and always have been?’ he said, a statement that made no sense at all.
His voice went on whispering at her, saying he would marry her tomorrow only his mother wouldn’t permit another woman in the house. She knew what it was like herself, he reminded her, having a parent to look after: you couldn’t leave them to rot, you had to honour your father and your mother.
She danced to ‘The Bells Are Ringing’, moving her legs in time with Bowser Egan’s while over his shoulder she watched Dano Ryan softly striking one of his smaller drums. Mrs Griffin had got him even though she was nearly fifty, with no looks at all, a lumpish woman with lumpish legs and arms. Mrs Griffin had got him just as the girl had got Patrick Grady.
The music ceased, Bowser Egan held her hard against him, trying to touch her face with his. Around them, people whistled and clapped: the evening had come to an end. She walked away from Bowser Egan, knowing that not ever again would she dance in the Ballroom of Romance. She’d been a figure of fun, trying to promote a relationship with a middle-aged County Council labourer, as ridiculous as Madge Dowding dancing on beyond her time.
‘I’m waiting outside for you, Cat,’ Eyes Horgan called out, lighting a cigarette as he made for the swing- doors.
Already the man with the long arms – made long, so they said, from carrying rocks off his land – had left the ballroom. Others were moving briskly. Mr Dwyer was tidying the chairs.
In the cloakroom the girls put on their coats and said they’d see one another at Mass the next day. Madge Dowding hurried. ‘Are you OK, Bridie?’ Patty Byrne asked and Bridie said she was. She smiled at little Patty Byrne, wondering if a day would come for the younger girl also, if one day she’d decide that she was a figure of fun in a wayside ballroom.
‘Good-night so,’ Bridie said, leaving the cloakroom, and the girls who were still chatting there wished her good-night. Outside the cloakroom she paused for a moment. Mr Dwyer was still tidying the chairs, picking up empty lemonade bottles from the floor, setting the chairs in a neat row. His wife was sweeping the floor. ‘Good-
