Each man poured tea for himself, passing a metal teapot around the table. Between mouthfuls the Horton’s man tapped a cigarette out of a Gold Flake packet and laid it, with matches, on the tablecloth, ready to ignite when his food was consumed. Shirts mainly he took orders for, he confided to the new man; but, in a general way, men’s apparel of every description formed his remit. The new man said he was in cement.
In the kitchen the daily girl arrived, no later than she should be. The front door banged, which Miss Connulty knew would be Joseph Paul returning from Mass. He hadn’t mentioned the stained-glass windows recently, but she knew that only minutes ago he would have glanced up at the grimy panes which were to be replaced and would have again taken pleasure in Father Millane’s proposal of an Annuciation. In time a brass plaque beside it would request prayers for the soul of Eileen Brigid Connulty.
Miss Connulty didn’t care any more. They could do what they liked: delicious death had been a richer compensation than she had ever dreamed of. She was in charge, and today she wore the pearls.
‘See to the master,’ she instructed the daily girl, and went to put her feet up, having been on them since six. She sat in the big front room, the eye of Daniel O’Connell upon her, and she wondered for a moment what he’d been like and came to no conclusion. She dropped off to sleep, although she had not intended to, and was woken by the men returning to their bedrooms, the thump of their footsteps on the stairs, the Horton’s man saying you’d feel the better for your breakfast.
At her writing-desk she made out their bills and when she went downstairs left them on the shelf by the front door, more convenient than the hallstand, where in her mother’s day they had been left. Each man would pick his up, would rattle the little bell she had moved from the hallstand to the shelf and, hearing the summons, she would answer it.
‘Have you spoken to him?’ she enquired of her brother in the dining-room, going there when the daily girl had brought in his breakfast.
Arranging egg, bacon and a corner of fried bread on his fork, Joseph Paul consumed the combination before he replied.
‘I have him fixed for November,’ he said then.
‘I don’t understand that.’
‘Bernadette O’Keeffe has Dempsey down for November. ’
‘Down? What’s it mean, down? I’m not asking you about Dempsey.’
‘You said would we get him in for the back bedrooms.’
‘I’m not talking about the back bedrooms. You know what I’m talking about.’
‘Bernadette O’Keeffe has Dempsey booked for the back bedrooms.’ Joseph Paul spoke slowly. ‘For the month of November,’ he said. ‘Commencing on the first Monday. Seemingly, he’s chock-a-block till then.’
‘I’m talking about Ellie Dillahan.’
‘What about Ellie Dillahan?’
‘You know what about her.’
‘I’d say there’s a lot being imagined as regards that.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, have sense!’
‘Ellie Dillahan’s a married woman, why’d she be going with a photographer? Dillahan used bring his turf into the yard. Sure, I know him well. Not in a million years would he permit the like of that.’
‘Dillahan knows nothing about it, why would he? His wife’s being bothered by a scut you wouldn’t give tuppence for, and the state she’s in you’d hardly get a word out of her. The cut of him on the bicycle with the hat, he’s the talk of the town and you’re telling me he doesn’t exist.’
An extraordinary thing, Joseph Paul considered, his breakfast getting cold. It might be her mother talking, expressions used he hadn’t heard since the time of the trouble. The two red spots had appeared high up on her cheeks and he remembered them from childhood. She’d pick up a handful of slack and throw it at you.
‘I mentioned it to Ellie myself,’ she was saying. ‘No option left to me.’
‘What’d you say to the poor girl?’
‘What had to be said, no more than that. What harm would it do you to say the same to him? Haven’t we had eggs from the Dillahans since they were brought in to us on a horse and cart? Then again, there’s the turf.’
‘You want me to go up to this man on the street?’
‘Isn’t it something you could say that that orphan girl is a daughter to us?’
The tedium of the conversation had lightened for Joseph Paul with his reflection that their mother’s influence and her insistences hadn’t entirely left the house, but he was considerably taken aback by the concept of a girl he doubted he’d ever addressed a word to being his daughter.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ He spoke roughly, not meaning to. It would be a terrible thing - and he often thought it - if the peculiarities his sister had acquired over the years turned out to be a creeping dementia. You’d hear of that unfortunate affliction, people would mention a relative. It could be that the running of the house on her own was too much for her. It could be that her delusions about people getting into the picture house ruins had to do with their father being forgotten there on the night of the disaster. She had been their father’s pet, as he had been their mother’s. That had never been denied by either of them, and it would have been upsetting for her, the way their father would be when he came into the house every night since the time of her trouble - the bloodshot eyes of him, his collar and tie in his pocket, the way he’d start up a foolish whistling in the hall, stumbling and falling down on the stairs, taking money from his wallet and offering it around as a mark of his remorse. He hadn’t touched more than a drop or two before the trouble.
His sister was still standing by the breakfast table and Joseph Paul suggested that she should sit down.
‘Will I get you water?’
‘What’d I want water for?’
‘I thought you might.’
