In her bedroom she did something she had not done for ten years at least: before she slipped into her night-dress she paused in front of the long looking-glass of her wardrobe and surveyed her naked body. It was most certainly no longer her best feature, she said to herself, remembering it when she was a child, standing up in the bath to be dried. She remembered being naked at last in the bedroom of the International Hotel in Bray, and the awkward voluptuousness that had followed. The bearing of four children, her fondness for sweet things, the insidious nips of gin in the clubhouse – in combination they had taken a toll, making clothes as necessary as all that meticulous care with make-up and hair. The first time she’d been pregnant, with Cathal, she had looked at herself in this same looking-glass, assuring herself that the enormous swelling would simply go away, as indeed it had. But nothing would go away now. Flesh hung loosely, marked with pink imprints of straps or elastic. If she slimmed herself to the bone there would be scrawny, empty skin, loops and pockets, hollows as ugly as the bulges. She drew her night-dress over her head and a pattern of pink roses in tight little bunches hid what she preferred not to see, transforming her again into a handsome woman.
Agnew had sensitive skin, yet could not resist the quality of finely woven tweed. He chose the sober colours, the greys and browns and inconspicuous greens. He bought his Donegal tweed in Kevin and Howlin’s in Dublin and had the suits made up by a tailor in Rathmines. Because of his sensitive skin he had the trousers lined.
Agnew had never worn these suits to his office in the toy factory, for they did not seem to him to be sufficiently matter-of-fact for business. He wore them at weekends, when he went to church and on Sunday afternoons when he drove out to Rathfarran and walked around the cliffs, ending up in Lynch’s Bar down by the strand, where by arrangement he took his Sunday supper. He wore them also on the weekends when he went to Dublin.
He would miss the cliffs and the strand, he reflected at breakfast one morning, a few weeks after his visit from Mrs O’Neill. He would miss the toy factory too, of course, and the people he had come to know in a passing kind of way, without intimacy or closeness but yet agreeably. In the snug, overcrowded dining-room of the terraced house called St Kevin’s he broke a piece of toast in half and poured himself more tea. He had been fortunate in St Kevin’s, fortunate because he was the only lodger and because the Misses McShane had never sought to share a meal with him, fortunate that the house was clean and the cooking averagely good. He’d been fortunate that his interest had never flagged in the job at the toy factory. He would take away with him a sample of every single wooden toy that had been manufactured during his time there: the duck with the quivering bill, the kangaroos, the giraffes, the little red steam engines, the donkeys and carts, the bricks, the elephants, the fox-terriers on wheels, and all the others. He was proud of these toys and of his part in their production. They were finer in every possible way – more ingeniously designed, constructed with greater craftsmanship, more fondly finished – than the torrent of shoddiness that had flooded them out of existence.
‘I’ll miss you too,’ he said aloud in the overcrowded dining-room, staring down at the spaniel, Mandy, who was wagging her tail in the hope of receiving a rind of bacon. She would eat rinds only if they were so brittle that they broke between her teeth. This morning, Agnew knew, what he had left would not satisfy her: the bacon had not been overdone. He lit a cigarette, folded the Irish Times, which earlier he had been reading, and left the dining-room, pursued by the dog. ‘I’m off now, Miss McShane,’ he called out in the hall, and one of the sisters called back to him from the kitchen. Mandy, as she always did, followed him through the town to the toy factory, turning back when he reached the forecourt.
A woman called Mrs Whelan, who came to the factory three mornings a week to attend to whatever typing there was and to keep the books up to date, was to finish at the end of the week. She was there this morning, a prim, trim presence in navy-blue, conscientiously tapping out the last of the invoices. The final delivery was due to be dispatched that afternoon, for Cathal O’Neill had already laid down the peremptory instruction that further orders must not be accepted.
‘Good morning, Mrs Whelan.’
‘Good morning, sir.’
Interrupted for the briefest of moments, she went on typing. She would be extremely useful to someone else, Agnew reflected, if she managed to find a position that suited her. ‘I think I’m going to start clearing out the inner office,’ he said, passing into it reluctantly, for it was not a task he anticipated with any pleasure. What on earth was he going to do with himself? Fifty-one was far too young simply to retire, even if he could afford to. It was all very well saying he couldn’t see himself in the fuel business, either coal or turf, but what alternative was there going to be? In the failing toy factory he had had a position, he had been of some small importance, and he had often wondered if he himself–and the predicament he must find himself in when the factory closed – hadn’t been an element in his late employer’s sentiment. Had Mr O’Neill lived, the toy factory might have struggled on until a convenient moment was reached, when its manager might gracefully retire. Still, a father’s sentiment rarely passed to a son, nor could it be expected to.
He took his jacket off and hung it up. As he did so the telephone rang and the widow of his late and sentimental employer invited him to what she described as a very small party on Friday evening. It would be in his honour, he said to himself after he had politely accepted. It was the kind of thing people did; there might even be a presentation, in the conventional way, of cutlery or Waterford glass or a clock.
‘Now, this is bloody ridiculous!’ Cathal glared at his mother, squinting in his extreme rage.
She remembered that squint in his pram. She remembered how his face would turn scarlet before exploding like a volcano, how he would beat his fists against her when she tried to lift him up. His father had had a bad temper also, though over the years she had learnt to ignore it.
‘It isn’t ridiculous at all, Cathal,’
‘You are fifty-nine years of age.’
‘I’m only too well aware of that.’
‘Agnew’s our employee, for God’s sake!’ He said something else and then broke off, his shout becoming an incomprehensible stutter. He began again, calming down and collecting himself. ‘My God, when I think of Agnew!’
‘I invited Basil Agnew –’
‘Basil? Basil?’
‘You knew his name was Basil. B.J. Agnew. It’s oh all the letters.’
‘In no way did I know the man’s name was Basil. I didn’t know what his bloody name was.’
‘Don’t be violent, Cathal.’
‘Aw, for God’s sake now!’ He turned away from her. He crossed the Italianate drawing-room and stood with his back to her, morosely looking out of the window.
‘I invited Basil Agnew to a little evening I had and he stayed on afterwards to help me clear up a bit. The Flanagans were there, and the Fitzfynnes and a few others. It was all quite above board, Cathal. Father Doherty was there, quite happy with the arrangement.’
‘You were seen out at Rathfarran with Agnew. You were in Lynch’s with him.’
‘That was later on, the following Sunday week it was. And of course we were in Lynch’s. We had two glasses of whiskey each in Lynch’s, and then we had our supper there.’
‘Will you for God’s sake examine what you’re doing? You hardly know Agnew.’
‘I’ve known him for seventeen years.’
Cathal mentioned his father, who, God rest him, would be disgusted if he knew, and probably he did know. He could not understand, Cathal repeated for the third time in this tempestuous conversation, how any sane woman could behave like this.