When he heard their news he would mention the savings in the Halifax Building Society and the goodwill of the shop and the valuation that had been carried out four years ago. He would mention again that men of all ages should have somewhere to go of an evening, or in the afternoons or the morning, a place to be at peace. He would remind them that a man who had benefited could not pass on without making provision for the rent and the heating and for the replacing of the billiard tables when the moment came. ‘Memorial to a humble man’, he would repeat. ‘Shopkeeper of this neighbourhood’.
In the darkness they did not say to one another that if he hadn’t insisted they needed a touch of the autumn sun they wouldn’t again have been exposed to humiliation. It was as though, through knowing them, he had arranged their failure in order to indulge his scorn. Creatures of a shabby institution, his eyes had so often said, they could not manage on their own: they were not even capable of supplying one another’s needs.
In the darkness they did not say that their greed for his money was much the same as his greed for their obedience, that greed nourished the trinity they had become. They did not say that the money, and the freedom it promised, was the galaxy in their lives, as his cruelty was the last pleasure in his. Scarcely aware that they held on to one another beneath the bedclothes, they heard his teasing little laugh while they were still awake, and again when they slept.
The Third Party
The two men met by arrangement in Buswell’s Hotel. The time and place had been suggested by the man who was slightly the older of the two; his companion had agreed without seeking an adjustment. Half past eleven in the bar: ‘I think we’ll probably spot one another all right,’ the older man had said. ‘Well, she’ll have told you what I look like.’
He was tall, acquiring bulkiness, a pinkish-brown sunburn darkening his face, fair curly hair that was turning grey. The man he met was thinner, with spectacles and a smooth black overcoat, a smaller man considerably. Lairdman this smaller man was called; the other’s name was Boland. Both were in their early forties.
‘Well, we’re neither of us late,’ Boland said in greeting, the more nervous of the two. ‘Fergus Boland. How are you?’
They shook hands. Boland pulled out his wallet. ‘I’ll have a Jameson myself. What’ll I get you?’
‘Oh, only a mineral. This time of day, Fergus. A lemonade.’
‘A Jameson and a lemonade,’ Boland ordered.
‘Sure,’ the barman said.
They stood by the bar. Boland held out a packet of cigarettes. ‘D’you smoke?’
Lairdman shook his head. He cocked an elbow on to the bar, arranging himself tidily. ‘Sorry about this,’ he said.
They were alone except for the barman, who set their two glasses in front of them. They weren’t going to sit down; there was no-move to do so. ‘A pound and tenpence,’ the barman said, and Boland paid him. Boland’s clothes – tweed jacket and corduroy trousers – were wrinkled: he’d driven more than a hundred miles that morning.
‘I mean I’m really sorry,’ Lairdman went on, ‘doing this to anyone.’
‘Good luck.’ Boland raised his glass. He had softened the colour of the whiskey by adding twice as much water. ‘You never drink this early in the day, I suppose?’ he said, constrainedly polite. ‘Well, very wise. That’s very sensible: I always say it.’
‘I thought it mightn’t be a drinking occasion.’
‘I couldn’t face you without a drink in, Lairdman.’
‘I’m sorry about that.’
‘You’ve lifted my wife off me. That isn’t an everyday occurrence, you know.’
‘I’m sorry –’
‘It would be better if you didn’t keep saying that.’
Lairdman, who was in the timber business, acknowledged the rebuke with a sideways wag of his head. The whole thing was awkward, he confessed, he hadn’t slept a wink the night before.
‘You’re a Dubliner, she tells me,’ Boland said, the same politeness to the fore. ‘You make blockboard: there’s money in that, no doubt about it.’
Lairdman was offended. She’d described her husband as clumsy but had added that he wouldn’t hurt a fly. Already, five minutes into the difficult encounter, Lairdman wasn’t so sure about that.
‘I don’t like Dublin,’ Boland continued. ‘I’ll be frank about it. I never have. I’m a small-town man, but of course you’ll know.’
He imagined his wife feeding her lover with information about his provincialism. She liked to tell people things; she talked a great deal. Boland had inherited a bakery in the town he had referred to, one that was quite unconnected with the more renowned Dublin bakery of the same name. A few years ago it had been suggested to him that he should consider retitling his, calling it Ideal Bread and Cakes, or Ovenfresh, in order to avoid confusion, but he saw no need for that, believing, indeed, that if a change should come about it should be made by the Dublin firm.
‘I want to thank you,’ Lairdman said, ‘for taking this so well. Annabella has told me.’
‘I doubt I have an option.’
Lairdman’s lips were notably thin, his mouth a narrow streak that smiled without apparent effort. He smiled a little now, but shook his head to dispel any misconception: he was not gloating, he was not agreeing that his mistress’s husband had no option. Boland was surprised that he didn’t have a little chopped-off moustache, as so many Dublin men had.
‘I thought when we met you might hit me,’ Lairdman said. ‘I remarked that to Annabella, but she said that wasn’t you at all.’
‘No, it isn’t me.’
‘That’s what I mean by taking it well.’
‘All I want to know is what you have in mind. She doesn’t seem to know herself.’
‘In mind?’
‘I’m not protesting at your intentions where my wife is concerned, only asking if you’re thinking of marrying her, only asking if you have some kind of programme. I mean, have you a place up here that’s suitable for her? You’re not a married man, I understand? I’ll have another J.J.,’ Boland called out to the barman.
‘No, I’m not a married man. What we were hoping was that – if you’re agreeable – Annabella could move herself into my place more or less at once. It’s suitable accommodation all right, a seven-room flat in Wellington Road. But in time we’ll get a house.’
‘Thanks,’ Boland said to the barman, paying him more money.
‘That was my turn,’ Lairdman protested, just a little late.
She wouldn’t care for meanness, Boland thought. She’d notice when it began to impinge on her, which in time it would: these things never mattered at first.
‘But marriage?’ he said. ‘It isn’t easy, you know, to marry another man’s wife in Ireland.’
‘Annabella and I would naturally like to be married one day.’
‘That’s what I wanted to put to you. How are you suggesting that a divorce is fixed? You’re not a Catholic, I’m to understand?’
‘No.’
‘No more am I. No more is Annabella. But that hardly matters, one way or another. She’s very vague on divorce. We talked about it for a long time.’
‘I appreciate that. And I appreciated your suggestion that we should meet.’
‘I have grounds for divorce, Lairdman, but a damn bit of use they are to me. A divorce’ll take an age.’
‘It could be hurried up if you had an address in England. If the whole thing could be filed over there we’d be home and dry in no time.’
‘But I haven’t an address in England.’
‘It’s only a thought, Fergus.’
‘So she wasn’t exaggerating when she said you wanted to marry her?’
‘I don’t think I’ve ever known Annabella to exaggerate,’ Lairdman replied stiffly.
Then you don’t know the most important thing about her, Boland confidently reflected – that being that she can’t help telling lies, which you and I would politely refer to as exaggerations. He believed that his wife actually disliked the truth, a rare enough attribute, he imagined, in any human being.