Cathal had his father’s wedge of a head, his forehead and wide-apart, narrow eyes. He was the first of their children to be born, the one who had received most attention because the others were girls. Heir to so much, he had been claimed by a thrusting entrepreneur’s world from infancy. The girls, except for Siobhan in Philadelphia, had been more mundanely claimed by men.
She wouldn’t have minded any of the others being in Arcangelo House, but Thelma had a greedy way of looking at her, as if she couldn’t wait to get into the place. Mrs O’Neill dearly wished that her son hadn’t married this girl, but he had and that was that. She sighed as she replaced the receiver, seeing Thelma’s slightly puffy face, her nose too small for the rest of it. She sat for a moment longer, endeavouring to release her imagination of that face and in the end succeeding. Then she dressed herself and went down to the toy factory. Agnew was in the inner office, standing by the window, his back to her as she entered.
‘Mr Agnew.’
‘Ah, Mrs O’Neill. Come in, come in, Mrs O’Neill.’ He moved so swiftly in turning to greet her that she was reminded of the assured way he danced the quickstep. He came every December to the Golf Club Dance even though he was not a club member and had once confided to her that he had never played the game. ‘Croquet,’ he’d confided also. ‘I used to be quite snappy at croquet.’ He had his own expressions, a way of putting things that sometimes sounded odd. Typical that he should mention an old-fashioned game like croquet.
‘I hope you’re not busy, Mr Agnew. I’m not disturbing you, am I?’
‘Heavens above, why would you be? Won’t you take a chair, Mrs O’Neill? A cup of tea now?’
There was always this formality. He offered it and seemed shyly to demand it. Her husband had always used his surname, and so did Cathal; at the Golf Club Dance she’d heard other men call him by his initials, B.J. She couldn’t in a million years imagine him addressing her as Norah.
‘No, I won’t have tea, thank you.’
‘A taste of sherry at all? I have a nice sweet little sherry –’
‘No, thanks. Really, Mr Agnew.’
He smiled, gently closing a glass-fronted cabinet he had opened in expectation of her accepting his hospitality. He was wearing a brown suit chalked with a pinstripe, and a green silk tie. He said:
‘Well, it seems we have come to the end of the road.’
‘I know. I’m awfully sorry.’
‘Mr O’Neill saw it coming years ago.’
‘Yes, I’m afraid he did.’
He smiled again; his voice was unperturbed. ‘The first day I came up to Arcangelo House I was terrified out of my wits. D’you remember, Mrs O’Neill? Your husband had an advertisement for the job in the Irish Times.’
‘It seems an age ago.’
‘Doesn’t it, though? An age.’
His face had acquired a meditative expression. He drew a packet of cigarettes from a pocket of his jacket and opened it slowly, folding back the silver paper. He advanced a single cigarette by knocking the packet on the surface of his desk. He leaned towards her, offering it. His wrists were slim: she had never noticed his wrists before.
‘Thank you, Mr Agnew.’
He leaned across the desk again, holding the flame of a cigarette-lighter to the tip of her cigarette. It gleamed with the dull patina of gold, as slender as a coin.
‘No, I don’t entirely know what I’ll do.’ He lit his own cigarette and then held it, dangling, in his long fingers.
‘Cathal should have something for you. It was my husband’s intention, you know, that everyone at the toy factory should be offered something.’
She wanted to make that clear; she wanted to record this unequivocal statement in the inner office so that later on, if necessary, she could quote herself to Cathal. She inhaled some smoke and released it luxuriously through her nostrils. She was fond of the occasional cigarette, although she never smoked when she was on her own.
‘I’m not so sure I’d entirely fit in, Mrs O’Neill. I don’t know anything about selling turf.’
She mentioned coal, which after all was the fuel that had made the O’Neills wealthy. There was still a thriving coal business, the biggest in the county.
He shook his head. His hair, once black, was almost completely grey now. ‘I don’t think,’ he said, ‘I’d be at home in coal.’
‘Well, I only thought I’d mention it.’
‘It’s more than kind, Mrs O’Neill.’
‘My husband wouldn’t have wanted anyone not looked after.’
‘Oh, indeed I know it.’
She stared at the lipstick mark on her cigarette and then raised the cigarette to her mouth again. It was awkward because she didn’t want to walk out of the factory smoking a cigarette, yet it was too soon to crush it out on the ashtray in front of her.
‘If there’s any way the family can help, you’ll say, Mr Agnew?’
‘I suppose I’ll go to Dublin.’
The remark was not accompanied by one of his glancing smiles; he gave no sign whatsoever that he’d touched upon a fascinating topic. No one knew why he spent weekends occasionally in Dublin, and a certain curiosity had gathered round the mystery of these visits. There was some secret which he kept, which he had not even confided to her husband in his lifetime. He came back melancholy was all her husband had ever reported, and once or twice with bloodshot eyes, as if he had spent the time drinking.
‘Though I’d rather not end up in Dublin,’ he added now. ‘To tell you the full truth, Mrs O’Neill, it’s not a city I entirely care for.’
She bent the remains of her cigarette in half, extinguishing it on the ashtray. She stood up, thinking it odd that he’d said Dublin wasn’t somewhere he cared for since he visited it so regularly.
‘The toy factory was a favourite of my husband’s. It saddened him to see it decline.’
‘It had its heyday.’
‘Yes, it had its day.’
She went, walking with him from the office, through a shed full of unassembled terriers on wheels. The white cut-out bodies with a brown spot around the tail, the brown heads, the little platforms that carried the wheels, the wheels themselves: all these dislocated parts lay about in stacks, seeming unwanted. No one was working in the shed.
He walked with her through other deserted areas, out on to the gravel forecourt that stretched in a semicircle around the front of the small factory. A man loaded wired cartons on to a lorry. They were still meeting orders in England, Agnew told her. The paint shop was as active as ever, three girls on full time.
He held his hand out, his sallow features illuminated by another smile. His palm was cool, his grip gentle. He asked her not to worry about him. He assured her he’d be all right.
There were gusts of laughter in the clubhouse. Dessie Fitzfynne had told a Kerry joke, concerning eight Kerry gardai and a cow. Dolores Fitzfynne, who’d just gone round in eighty-two and wanted to talk about that instead, requested that he shouldn’t tell another. Sweetman was talking about horses, arranging something about going to the Curragh. Sweetman loved getting parties together to go racing or to Lansdowne Road, or for a weekend down in Kelly’s at Rosslare. Paunchy and rubicund, Flanagan kept saying it was his turn and what did anyone want?
‘I heard the factory’s winding up,’ the solicitor, Butler-Regan, remarked in his rowdy voice and she nodded, suddenly feeling dismal. She had forgotten about the toy factory while she’d been on the golf-course, going round in ninety-one, taking three to get out of the rough at the eighth. She’d been playing with Dessie Fitzfynne, opposing Dolores and Flanagan. They’d been beaten, of course.
It was silly to feel dismal just because the facts of commerce dictated the closure of an unprofitable concern. As both Cathal and Agnew had intimated, the end had been a matter of anticipation for years. Only sentiment had prevented such a decision in the lifetime of her husband.