‘Did you think of Lisdoonvarna—or must it be abroad?’
‘Abroad,’ Mulhall said. ‘Herself always insists on the sea trip.’
‘Well—have a nice time,’ the stableman said, beginning once again to rake up the straw. But as Mulhall was leading the horse across the yard another thought struck him and he shouted after him: ‘And don’t forget to send us a postcard.’
Mulhall yoked up and went over to the hatch for the bundle of dockets which would make up his delivery duties for the day. He checked through them. They were all city business premises, which meant very little stair-climbing, a relief. Then he noticed that there seemed to be less of them than usual.
‘Is this the lot?’ he asked.
‘There’s one more,’ the clerk said. ‘It’s a very special one so I kept it separate.’
He handed out another docket. It was for a house about six miles away, on the other side of Phoenix Park. It had the word ‘Priority’ inscribed and underlined on the top corner.
‘Holy Jaysus!’ Mulhall exclaimed when he saw it.
‘Some friend of Doggett’s,’ the clerk speculated.
‘It’ll take the whole morning.’
‘I know. That’s why I’ve given you less of the others.’
It would mean a long slow journey across the city and by the high, unsheltered road that led through the Park. On a fine day he would have welcomed it; today it meant freezing with inactivity and being soaked to the skin. Mulhall stuffed the dockets into his pocket and went across the yard again, this time to load up.
The long mirror of the wardrobe showed her the transformation. The dark coat, with the pleated cape at the shoulders, completely hid her house clothes. The feather on the black velvet hat nodded at her from the glass, with such an air of elegance that she became uneasy. It was too good for her. It would embarrass her husband. She said so to Mary, who stood behind, admiring her.
‘Nonsense,’ Mary said, ‘it looks just right.’ She turned to Fitz for confirmation.
‘He won’t know you for style,’ Fitz said encouragingly.
Mary, busy helping Mrs. Mulhall to adjust the hat with the feather, asked him to look in the box on the sideboard for a white medallion which was yet another of the odds and ends Mrs. Bradshaw had sent to her over the past several months. The articles came regularly; now a chair, or curtains perhaps, cast-off clothes that were far better than any she could have bought in the second-hand shops. The latest gifts were two ornamental dogs which now stood on the mantelpiece on either side of the clock Pat had given them on their wedding day. Mrs. Mulhall had noticed them the moment she called to borrow the coat.
‘You have everything,’ she said, looking round a little enviously at the comfortable room.
Fitz found a cameo brooch among the litter of buttons and safety pins.
‘Wear it on your blouse,’ Mary said to Mrs. Mulhall, ‘it will look very nice.’
The older woman hesitated. It was one thing to be clean and tidy, but another to dress above your station. The brooch was meant for a lady.
‘I couldn’t’, she protested, ‘it wouldn’t be right.’
But in the end she took it away with her. It was a long time since she had been to a theatre. It would be a long time again.
She left the clothes in her bedroom and put on her shawl to shop for Willie’s lunch. She wore it over her head and shoulders, holding it tight under her chin with her hands. It was Friday so she bought herrings. When a carter drove past her, huddled against the cold and wet of the morning, she was sorry for him and thought of her own husband. Bernie was a big man. He was strong. But he was not getting any younger. Strength was no use against the wettings and the colds of winter. You needed youth as well. When she got home, before she started to prepare the dinner for her son, she took her husband’s suit from the cupboard and spread it in front of the fire which she built up with reckless extravagance, until its glow showed on each wall of the room. His clothes would be aired and warm for him when he came home. Then she peeled potatoes. That too, made the day unusual. Normally the men did not get home until evening. But today Willie was taking the afternoon off to attend a final band practice before the competition. She set the table for him and prepared the pan. It was donkey’s years, she told herself, since she had done that in the middle of the day.
‘What did you think of her?’ Mary asked.
‘Who?’ Fitz said absently. He was taking his dinner before going to work.
She sighed and said: ‘Mrs. Mulhall—of course.’
‘I thought she looked very nice,’ he said.
‘She’ll enjoy her little outing.’
‘So will I,’ Fitz said. ‘I’ve been listening to those same three tunes on the fife for the past six weeks. How Bernard Mulhall sticks it I don’t know.’
‘Willie is their son. That makes all the difference,’ Mary said.
She took away his plate and poured tea into a mug she had bought for him when she was staying with her father. It had the words ‘A present from Cork’ engraved on it. He looked at the inscription and then at the rain beating against the window and thought how long ago that had been. She had returned in July, and after that it had been their best summer together in their four years of marriage. Steady work and the occasional assistance from Mrs. Bradshaw made them modestly comfortable. Having the second-hand pram they got down most Sundays with the children to Sandymount Strand. There must have been wet days, but he could not now remember them. He could only remember blue skies and level stretches of sand. If the tide was fully ebbed it took half an hour to reach the edge of the sea, and when you turned around the houses along the coast road were tiny with distance, and the beauty of the mountains of Dublin and Wicklow encircling the bay would take your breath away. Even now the thought of that strand moved him. He had played on it as a child, and many a long evening he had walked across it from the Half Moon Swimming Club, a young man made melancholy by the breadth of a summer sunset, or perhaps passing the time by trying to count the lights that had begun to appear through the dusk along the coast road.
‘Cork by the Lee,’ he bantered, taking the mug.
‘Caherdermott’s on the Lee too,’ she said, ‘but it’s only a small stream you could wade across.’
‘So is the Liffey near Sally Gap.’
‘Where’s Sally Gap?’
‘In the mountains. We’d need bicycles to get there.’
He used to cycle there too in the summers of long ago. Once he had lost his way and an old man who lived alone in a cottage made him have tea and bread and butter and boiled eggs for both of them. It was strange, all the memories of summer a mug with ‘Present from Cork’ on it could call up. He told Mary about it as he finished the tea, but it didn’t sound very interesting. Then he took his supper parcel and went out to work, meeting Willie Mulhall on the way. Willie had on a bandsman’s hat and wore a patent leather strap across one shoulder like a Sam Browne. The fife was sticking out of his pocket.
‘Good luck tonight,’ he said, as they parted in the street.
‘We’ll need it,’ Willie said fervently. He was nearly nineteen now. Competitions were important.
‘There’s Willie Mulhall with the cap on him,’ Hennessy said. He was sitting in the basement with Rashers and could see the street above through a section of the window that the cardboard was not wide enough to cover.
‘What cap?’
‘The bandsman’s cap.’
‘Bandsman how-are-you,’ Rashers said, letting a great spit into the home-made brazier that stood in the fireplace. It was an old bucket pierced with holes and full now of glowing charcoal he had gathered laboriously from the beach the day before. It was to be found along the high-tide mark when the water had receded, especially after stormy weather.