In no way did Teresa love him. She had been aware of that when Father Hogan had arranged the marriage, and even before that, when she’d told her mother that she thought she was pregnant and had then mentioned Artie Cornish’s name. Artie Cornish was much the same as his friends: you could be walking along a road with Screw Doyle or Artie Cornish and you could hardly tell the difference. There was nothing special about Artie Cornish, except that he always added up the figures twice when he was serving you in Driscoll’s. There was nothing bad about him either, any more than there was anything bad about Eddie Boland or Chas Flynn or even Screw Doyle. She’d said privately to Father Hogan that she didn’t love him or feel anything for him one way or the other: Father Hogan had replied that in the circumstances all that line of talk was irrelevant.
When she was at the Presentation Convent Teresa had imagined her wedding, and even the celebration in this very lounge-bar. She had imagined everything that had happened that morning, and the things that were happening still. She had imagined herself standing with her bridesmaids as she was standing now, her mother and her aunt drinking sherry, Agnes and Loretta being there too, and other people, and music. Only the bridegroom had been mysterious, some faceless, bodiless presence, beyond imagination. From conversations she had had with Philomena and Kitty Roche, and with her sisters, she knew that they had imagined in a similar way. Yet Agnes had settled for George Tobin because George Tobin was employed in Cork and could take her away from the town. Loretta, who had been married for a matter of weeks, was going to become a nun.
Artie ordered more bottles of stout from young Kevin. He didn’t want to catch the half-one bus and have to sit beside her all the way to Cork. He didn’t want to go to the Lee Hotel when they could just as easily have remained in the town, when he could just as easily have gone in to Driscoll’s tomorrow and continued as before. It would have been different if Screw Doyle hadn’t said he’d been in a field with her: you could pretend a bit on the bus, and in the hotel, just to make the whole thing go. You could pretend like you’d been pretending ever since Father Hogan had laid down the law, you could make the best of it like Father Hogan had said.
He handed a bottle of stout to Chas Flynn and one to Screw Doyle and another to Eddie Boland. He’d ask her about it on the bus. He’d repeat what Screw Doyle had said and ask her if it was true. For all he knew the child she was carrying was Screw Doyle’s child and would be born with Screw Doyle’s thin nose, and everyone in the town would know when they looked at it. His mother had told him when he was sixteen never to trust a girl, never to get involved, because he’d be caught in the end. He’d get caught because he was easy-going, because he didn’t possess the smartness of Screw Doyle and some of the others. ‘Sure, you might as well marry Teresa as anyone else,’ his father had said after Father Hogan had called to see them about the matter. His mother had said things would never be the same between them again.
Eddie Boland sat down at the piano and played ‘Mother Macree’, causing Agnes and Loretta to move to the other side of the lounge-bar. In the motor-car outside the Tobin children asked their father what the music was for.
‘God go with you, girl,’ Father Hogan said to Teresa, motioning Kitty Roche and Philomena away. ‘Isn’t it a grand thing that’s happened, Teresa?’ His red-skinned face, with the shiny false teeth so evenly arrayed in it, was close to hers. For a moment she thought he might kiss her, which of course was ridiculous, Father Hogan kissing anyone, even at a wedding celebration.
‘It’s a great day for all of us, girl.’
When she’d told her mother, her mother said it made her feel sick in her stomach. Her father hit her on the side of the face. Agnes came down specially from Cork to try and sort the matter out. It was then that Loretta had first mentioned becoming a nun.
‘I want to say two words,’ said Father Hogan, still standing beside her, but now addressing everyone in the lounge-bar. ‘Come over here alongside us, Artie. Is there a drop in everyone’s glass?’
Artie moved across the lounge-bar, with his glass of stout. Mr Cornish told young Kevin to pour out a few more measures. Eddie Boland stopped playing the piano.
‘It’s only this,’ said Father Hogan. ‘I want us all to lift our glasses to Artie and Teresa. May God go with you, the pair of you,’ he said, lifting his own glass.
‘Health, wealth and happiness,’ proclaimed Mr Cornish from the bar.
‘And an early night,’ shouted Screw Doyle. ‘Don’t forget to draw the curtains, Artie.’
They stood awkwardly, not holding hands, not even touching. Teresa watched while her mother drank the remains of her sherry, and while her aunt drank and Mrs Cornish drank. Agnes’s face was disdainful, a calculated reply to the coarseness of Screw Doyle’s remarks. Loretta was staring ahead of her, concentrating her mind on her novitiate. A quick flush passed over the roughened countenance of Kitty Roche. Philomena laughed, and all the men in the lounge-bar, except Father Hogan, laughed.
‘That’s sufficient of that talk,’ Father Hogan said with contrived severity. ‘May you meet happiness halfway,’ he added, suitably altering his intonation. ‘The pair of you, Artie and Teresa.’
Noise broke out again after that. Father Hogan shook hands with Teresa and then with Artie. He had a funeral at half past two, he said: he’d better go and get his dinner inside him.
‘Goodbye, Father,’ Artie said. ‘Thanks for doing the job.’
‘God bless the pair of you,’ said Father Hogan, and went away.
‘We should be going for the bus,’ Artie said to her. ‘It wouldn’t do to miss the old bus.’
‘No, it wouldn’t.’
‘I’ll see you down there. You’ll have to change your clothes.’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ll come the way I am.’
‘You’re fine the way you are, Artie.’
He looked at the stout in his glass and didn’t raise his eyes from it when he spoke again. ‘Did Screw Doyle take you into a field, Teresa?’
He hadn’t meant to say it then. It was wrong to come out with it like that, in the lounge-bar, with the wedding-cake still there on the piano, and Teresa still in her wedding-dress, and confetti everywhere. He knew it was wrong even before the words came out; he knew that the stout had angered and befuddled him.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Sorry, Teresa.’
She shook her head. It didn’t matter: it was only to be expected that a man you didn’t love and who didn’t love you would ask a question like that at your wedding celebration.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, he did.’
‘He told me. I thought he was codding. I wanted to know.’
‘It’s your baby, Artie. The other thing was years ago.’
He looked at her. Her face was flushed, her eyes had tears in them.
‘I had too much stout,’ he said.
They stood where Father Hogan had left them, drawn away from their wedding guests. Not knowing where else to look, they looked together at Father Hogan’s black back as he left the lounge-bar, and then at the perspiring, naked heads of Mr Cornish and Mr Atty by the bar.
At least they had no illusions, she thought. Nothing worse could happen than what had happened already, after Father Hogan had laid down the law. She wasn’t going to get a shock like Loretta had got. She wasn’t going to go sour like Agnes had gone when she’d discovered that it wasn’t enough just to marry a man for a purpose, in order to escape from a town. Philomena was convincing herself that she’d fallen in love with an elderly vet, and if she got any encouragement Kitty Roche would convince herself that she was mad about anyone at all.
For a moment as Teresa stood there, the last moment before she left the lounge-bar, she felt that she and Artie might make some kind of marriage together because there was nothing that could be destroyed, no magic or anything else. He could ask her the question he had asked, while she stood there in her wedding-dress: he could ask her and she could truthfully reply, because there was nothing special about the occasion, or the lounge-bar all covered in confetti.