‘Dermot, would you take something round to Mr Joyce?’
‘A message, is it?’
‘I have a tartan tie for him.’
‘Wouldn’t you give it to him on the day, Norah? Like you always do.’ He spoke softly, still insisting. She shook her head.
It was all her fault. If she hadn’t said they should go to England, if she hadn’t wanted to work in a London shop, they wouldn’t be caught in the trap they’d made for themselves. Their children spoke with London accents. Patrick and Brendan worked for English firms and would make their homes in England. Patrick had married an English girl. They were Catholics and they had Irish names, yet home for them was not Waterford.
‘Could you make it up with Mr Joyce, Dermot? Could you go round with the tie and say you were sorry?’
‘Sorry?’
‘You know what I mean.’ In spite of herself her voice had acquired a trace of impatience, an edginess that was unusual in it. She did not ever speak to him like that. It was the way she occasionally spoke to the children.
‘What would I say I was sorry for, Norah?’
‘For what you said that night.’ She smiled, calming her agitation. He lit another cigarette, the flame of the match briefly illuminating his face. Nothing had changed in his face. He said:
‘I don’t think Mr Joyce and I had any disagreement, Norah.’
‘I know, Dermot. You didn’t mean anything –’
‘There was no disagreement, girl.’
There had been no disagreement, but on that evening in August something else had happened. On the nine o’clock news there had been a report of another outrage and afterwards, when Dermot had turned the television off, there’d been the familiar comment on it. He couldn’t understand the mentality of people like that, Mr Joyce said yet again, killing just anyone, destroying life for no reason. Dermot had shaken his head over it, she herself had said it was uncivilized. Then Dermot had added that they mustn’t of course forget what the Catholics in the North had suffered. The bombs were a crime but it didn’t do to forget that the crime would not be there if generations of Catholics in the North had not been treated as animals. There’d been a silence then, a difficult kind of silence which she’d broken herself. All that was in the past, she’d said hastily, in a rush, nothing in the past or the present or anywhere else could justify the killing of innocent people. Even so, Dermot had added, it didn’t do to avoid the truth. Mr Joyce had not said anything.
‘I’d say there was no need to go round with the tie, Norah. I’d say he’d make the effort on Christmas Day.’
‘Of course he won’t.’ Her voice was raised, with more than impatience in it now. But her anger was controlled. ‘Of course he won’t come.’
‘It’s a time for goodwill, Norah. Another Christmas: to remind us.’
He spoke slowly, the words prompted by some interpretation of God’s voice in answer to a prayer. She recognized that in his deliberate tone.
‘It isn’t just another Christmas. It’s an awful kind of Christmas. It’s a Christmas to be ashamed, and you’re making it worse, Dermot.’ Her lips were trembling in a way that was uncomfortable. If she tried to calm herself she’d become jittery instead, she might even begin to cry. Mr Joyce had been generous and tactful, she said loudly. It made no difference to Mr Joyce that they were Irish people, that their children went to school with the children of I.R.A. men. Yet his generosity and his tact had been thrown back in his face. Everyone knew that the Catholics in the North had suffered, that generations of injustice had been twisted into the shape of a cause. But you couldn’t say it to an old man who had hardly been outside Fulham in his life. You couldn’t say it because when you did it sounded like an excuse for murder.
‘You have to state the truth, Norah. It’s there to be told.’
‘I never yet cared for a North of Ireland person, Catholic or Protestant. Let them fight it out and not bother us.’
‘You shouldn’t say that, Norah.’
‘It’s more of your truth for you.’
He didn’t reply. There was the gleam of his face for a moment as he drew on his cigarette. In all their married life they had never had a quarrel that was in any way serious, yet she felt herself now in the presence of a seriousness that was too much for her. She had told him that whenever a new bombing took place she prayed it might be the work of the Angry Brigade, or any group that wasn’t Irish. She’d told him that in shops she’d begun to feel embarrassed because of her Waterford accent. He’d said she must have courage, and she realized now that he had drawn on courage himself when he’d made the remark to Mr Joyce. He would have prayed and considered before making it. He would have seen it in the end as his Catholic duty.
‘He thinks you don’t condemn people being killed.’ She spoke quietly even though she felt a wildness inside her. She felt she should be out on the streets, shouting in her Waterford accent, violently stating that the bombers were more despicable with every breath they drew, that hatred and death were all they deserved. She saw herself on Fulham Broadway, haranguing the passers-by, her greying hair blown in the wind, her voice more passionate than it had ever been before. But none of it was the kind of thing she could do because she was not that kind of woman. She hadn’t the courage, any more than she had the courage to urge her anger to explode in their living-room. For all the years of her marriage there had never been the need of such courage before: she was aware of that, but found no consolation in it.
‘I think he’s maybe seen it by now,’ he said. ‘How one thing leads to another.’
She felt insulted by the words. She willed herself the strength to shout, to pour out a torrent of fury at him, hut the strength did not come. Standing up, she stumbled in the gloom and felt a piece of holly under the sole of her shoe. She turned the light on.
‘I’ll pray that Mr Joyce will come,’ he said.
She looked at him, pale and thin, with his priestly face. For the first time since he had asked her to marry him in the Tara Ballroom she did not love him. He was cleverer than she was, yet he seemed half blind. He was good, yet he seemed hard in his goodness, as though he’d be better without it. Up to the very last moment on Christmas Day there would be the pretence that their landlord might arrive, that God would answer a prayer because His truth had been honoured. She considered it hypocrisy, unable to help herself in that opinion.
He talked but she did not listen. He spoke of keeping faith with their own, of being a Catholic. Crime begot crime, he said, God wanted it to be known that one evil led to another. She continued to look at him while he spoke, pretending to listen but wondering instead if in twelve months’ time, when another Christmas came, he would still be cycling from house to house to read gas meters. Or would people have objected, requesting a meter-reader who was not Irish? An objection to a man with an Irish accent was down-to-earth and ordinary. It didn’t belong in the same grand category as crime begetting crime or God wanting something to be known, or in the category of truth and conscience. In the present circumstances the objection would be understandable and fair. It seemed even right that it should be made, for it was a man with an Irish accent in whom the worst had been brought out by the troubles that had come, who was guilty of a cruelty no one would have believed him capable of. Their harmless elderly landlord might die in the course of that same year, a friendship he had valued lost, his last Christmas lonely. Grand though it might seem in one way, all of it was petty.
Once, as a girl, she might have cried, but her contented marriage had caused her to lose that habit. She cleared up the tea things, reflecting that the bombers would be pleased if they could note the victory they’d scored in a living-room in Fulham. And on Christmas Day, when a family sat down to a conventional meal, the victory would be greater. There would be crackers and chatter and excitement, the Queen and the Pope would deliver speeches. Dermot would discuss these Christmas messages with Patrick and Brendan, as he’d discussed them in the past with Mr Joyce. He would be as kind as ever. He would console Bridget and Cathal and Tom by saying that Mr Joyce hadn’t been up to the journey. And whenever she looked at him she would remember the Christmases of the past. She would feel ashamed of him, and of herself.