‘Ask him who he is. Tell him there’s talk. What’ll happen to the girl when Dillahan washes his hands of her? Where’ll she go? Will she walk the roads like poor Orpen Wren? If a child is born, what’ll happen then? Take it easy with him, don’t abuse him in case he’d hit you. All I’m saying is, explain to him we take an interest in the girl because of the family association. All I’m saying is, ask him straight out what he thinks he’s doing. I always liked Ellie.’
‘There isn’t a word spoken in the back bar of anything awry going on.’
‘Who comes into the back bar would know? Aren’t the priests bound by the confessional? What I’m saying to you is a person who interferes with another person’s funeral should be spoken to, never mind the interest taken in a picture house where a tragedy occurred, never mind he’s after a young Catholic girl from the hills.’
She went on talking, repeating everything she’d said already. The fat on Joseph Paul’s plate had begun to congeal, a skin had formed on the yolk of his fried egg. The daily girl came in to clear the table.
‘I’ll make a few enquiries,’ he said.
The conversation ended with that but later, on his way to his business premises, Joseph Paul refle cted that, ever since the upheaval his sister’s foolishness had brought about in the house, he had regularly noticed her gazing out of one or other of the front windows and had known what she was looking for. He had seen her polishing the overnight shoes and had conjectured that each pair took on for her the form of Arthur Tetlow’s ornamental black brogues - a fantasy that was perhaps the last fantasy left to her and one that in her mind was somehow endangered by what she imagined was going on.
He unlocked the door of the public house while still dwelling on the matter and believing with even greater conviction that the venom directed against a stranger on a bicycle had its source in his sister’s betrayal by a traveller in veterinary requisites. Passing through the long street bar, he confirmed to himself his approval of that conclusion, even for a moment feeling sorry for his sister as once he would have.
Miss Connulty’s interpretation of the breakfast-time contretemps was different. Occupied with changing sheets, she did not regret her anger or wonder why so persistently she had gone on. Her reflections were practical and to the point: she felt better for what had been said. Had she been aware of the contents of her brother’s mind during their exchanges she could have told him that in the circumstances dementia was too convenient a term to throw about: she suffered from nothing of the kind, and it was only to be expected that in the normal course of nature she should have developed an interest in the well-being of the girl who delivered eggs to her. There was no more to anything but that.
She finished in one bedroom and began in the next, pulling off the top sheet and then the bottom one, shaking off the pillowslips. She had known what she was doing in giving herself to Arthur Tetlow, and regretted only that she had remained in a house she should not have remained in. Aloud, and firmly, she stated again that she intended to protect Ellie Dillahan in whatever way should be necessary. She gathered up the slept-in sheets, and knocked out four cigarette butts from the bedside ashtray. She propped the window open and settled the blind the way it should be, a little further down to make more of its lace frill.
Later that same morning, after Bernadette had been to the back bar with the letters and the cheques, it occurred to Joseph Paul that there might just possibly be another element in his sister’s eccentric conduct. Given what she believed was happening between Ellie Dillahan and the man from Castledrummond, she could have worked herself up into a state of resentful jealousy. Her own day was done; she made do with the polishing of other men’s shoes.
Affected as the morning advanced by the possible truth of this outcome, Joseph Paul again felt sorry for the sister who had once been his companion. And as if telepathy, long absent between the two, had once more come into play, Miss Connulty on her way downstairs wondered, too, about jealousy. But before the thought could get going, she dismissed it as ridiculous.
15
Florian’s passport arrived one morning. The photograph he’d taken of himself had been pasted in, his signature pasted in too, other details completed.
It was signed by Kevin Greacen, and he wondered who that was. It was valid for all countries. It was a valuable document. With a golden harp embossed on its green Rexine cover, with
Florian put it on the mantelpiece of his bedroom, where he could see it and wouldn’t forget where it was. He wiped the mildew from the smallest of the suitcases he had found. He washed it and put it outside the back door to dry in the sun.
In the afternoon of that same day two charity women came for the clothes. Neither death was recent, Florian told them, not that they brought the subject up, but conversation of some kind seemed called for.
‘You’re on your own?’ the one with glasses asked on the way upstairs.
‘You’re peaceful here,’ the other one said, her face familiar but he couldn’t place it.
‘Yes, it’s peaceful.’
He sensed their thinking it was a shame to see the place run down. He opened the wardrobe that had been shared and considered saying it wasn’t as strange as it seemed, their clothes kept for so long. But he doubted that he could explain why it wasn’t and said nothing.
‘The shoes, the shoe-trees?’ the woman with glasses enquired. She was the older of the two, with thin grey hair, tall and very upright, as if she’d taught herself to hold on to her posture because she knew that with an effort she could.
‘Coat-hangers too?’ the other woman asked.
‘Everything, if you wouldn’t mind.’
‘Of course we wouldn’t.’
‘You’re clearing up?’
‘The house is being sold.’
Further prospective purchasers had come, the interest in the sale now so keen that the estate agents were increasingly confident of an early offer. The mass of creditors had already been optimistically reassured, a date arranged for a dealer to inspect the remaining furniture in case there was anything of value. A builder’s skip had been lowered on to the gravel in front of the hall door and was already almost half full.
Every little helped, the charity women said, thanking him before they left. They mentioned the charities they had in mind for the clothes and, of course, there would be the local poor as well. Florian nodded his understanding
