Afterwards Dervla watched from an upstairs window, the window in fact of Room 14. The archdeacon’s daughter sat with him in the garden, each of them in a deck-chair, laughing and conversing. They were always laughing: the archdeacon’s daughter would say something and he would throw his head back with appreciation and delight. Long before the engagement was announced Dervla knew that this was the girl who was going to take her place, in his life and in the hotel.
The Archdeacon conducted the service in St Peter’s, and then the guests made their way to the garden of the hotel. That the wedding reception was to be at the hotel was a business arrangement between the Archdeacon and Mr Congreve, for the expenses were to be the former’s, as convention demanded. It was a day in June, a Thursday, in the middle of a heatwave.
Dervla and a new maid with spectacles handed round glasses of champagne. Artie saw to it that people had chairs to sit on if they wished to sit. The archdeacon’s daughter wore a wedding-dress that had a faint shade of blue in it, and a Limerick lace veil. She was kissed by people in the garden, she smiled while helping to cut the wedding cake. Her four bridesmaids, Molly and Margery-Jane among them, kept saying she looked marvellous.
Speeches were made in the sunshine. Dr Molloy made one and so did the best man, Tom Gouvernet, and Mr Congreve. Dr Molloy remembered the day Christopher was born, and Mr Congreve remembered the first time he’d set eyes on the beauty of the Archdeacon’s daughter, and Tom Gouvernet remembered Christopher at school. Other guests remembered other occasions; Christopher said he was the lucky man and kissed the archdeacon’s daughter while people clapped their hands with delight. Tom Gouvernet fell backwards off the edge of a raised bed.
There was an excess of emotion in the garden, an excess of smiles and tears and happiness and love. The champagne glasses were held up endlessly, toast after toast. Christopher’s mother moved among the guests with the plump wife of the archdeacon and the Archdeacon himself, who was as frail as a stalk of straw. In his easy-going way Christopher’s father delighted in the champagne and the sunshine, and the excitement of a party. Mr McKibbin, the bank agent, was there, and Hogarty the surveyor, and an insurance man who happened to be staying at the hotel. There was nothing Mr Congreve liked better than standing about talking to these barroom companions.
‘Thanks, Dervla.’ Taking a glass from her tray, Christopher smiled at her because for ages that had been possible again.
‘It’s a lovely wedding, sir.’
‘Yes, it is.’
He looked at her eyes, and was aware of the demanding steadiness of her gaze. He sensed what she was wondering and wondered it himself: what would have happened if she’d been asked to leave the hotel? He guessed, as she did: they would have shared the resentment and the anger that both of them had separately experienced; defiantly they would have continued to meet in the town; she would have accompanied him on his walks, out into the country and the fields. There would have been talk in the town and scenes in the hotel, their relationship would again have been proscribed. They would have drawn closer to one another, their outraged feelings becoming an element in the forbidden friendship. In the end, together, they would have left the hotel and the town and neither of them would be standing here now. Both their lives would be quite different.
‘You’ll be getting married yourself one of these days, Dervla.’
‘Ah, no no.’
She was still quite pretty. There was a simplicity about her freckled features that was pleasing; her soft fair hair was neat beneath her maid’s white cap. But she was not beautiful. Once, not knowing much about it, he had imagined she was. It was something less palpable that distinguished her.
‘Oh, surely? Surely, Dervla?’
‘I don’t see myself giving up the hotel, sir. My future’s here, sir.’
He smiled again and passed on. But his smile, which remained while he listened to a story of Tom Gouvernet’s about the hazards to be encountered on a honeymoon, was uneasy. An echo of the eyes that had gazed so steadily remained with him, as did the reference she had made to her future. That she had not been turned out of the hotel had seemed something to be proud of at the time: a crudity had been avoided. But while Tom Gouvernet’s lowered voice continued, he found himself wishing she had been. She would indeed not ever marry, her eyes had stated, she would not wish to.
A hand of his wife’s slipped into one of his; the voice of Tom Gouvernet ceased. The hand was as delicate as the petal of a flower, the fingers so tiny that involuntarily he lifted them to his lips. Had Dervla seen? he Wondered, and he looked through the crowd for a glimpse of her but could not see her. Hogarty the surveyor was doing a trick with a handkerchief, entertaining the coal merchant’s daughters. Mr McKibben was telling one of his stories.
‘Ah, he’s definitely the lucky man,’ Tom Gouvernet said, playfully winking at the bride.
It had never occurred to Christopher before that while he and his parents could successfully bury a part of the past, Dervla could not. It had never occurred to him that because she was the girl she was she did not appreciate that some experiences were best forgotten. Ever since the Congreves had owned the Royal Hotel a way of life had obtained there, but its subtleties had naturally eluded the dining-room maid.
‘When you get tired of him,’ Tom Gouvernet went on in the same light manner, ‘you know who to turn to.’
‘Oh, indeed I do, Tom.’
He should have told her about Dervla. If he told her now she would want Dervla to go; any wife would, in perfect reasonableness. An excuse must be found, she would say, even though a promise had been made.
‘But I won’t become tired of him,’ she was saying, smiling at Tom Gouvernet. ‘He’s actually quite nice, you know.’
In the far distance Dervla appeared, hurrying from the hotel with a freshly laden tray. Christopher watched her, while the banter continued between bride and best man.
‘He had the shocking reputation at school,’ Tom Gouvernet said.
‘Oh? I didn’t know that.’ She was still smiling; she didn’t believe it. It wasn’t true.
‘A right Lothario you’ve got yourself hitched to.’
He would not tell her. It was too late for that, it would bewilder her since he had not done so before. It wouldn’t be fair to require her not to wish that Dervla, even now, should be asked to go; or to understand that a promise made to a dining-room maid must be honoured because that was the family way.
Across the garden the Archdeacon lifted a glass from Dervla’s tray. He was still in the company of his plump wife and Christopher’s mother. They, too, took more champagne and then Dervla walked towards where Christopher was standing with his bride and his best man. She moved quickly through the crowd, not offering her tray of glasses to the guests she passed, intent upon her destination.
‘Thank you, Dervla,’ his wife of an hour said.
‘I think Mr Hogarty,’ he said himself, ‘could do with more champagne.’
He watched her walking away and was left again with the insistence in her eyes. As the dining-room maid, she would become part of another family growing up in the hotel. She would listen to a mother telling her children about the strand where once she’d bathed, where a retired lighthouse keeper had passed by on a horse. For all his life he would daily look upon hers, but no words would ever convey her undramatic revenge because the right to speak, once his gift to her, had been taken away. He had dealt in cruelty and so now did she: her gift to him, held over until his wedding day, was that afternoon shadows would gather for ever in Room 14, while she kept faith.