When Davy had paid for them they left the public house, Kitty talking about a girl called Rose she’d been at the national school with, wondering where she was now. She hung on to his arm; he listened vaguely. Turning into the cul-de-sac, they met Mr Hurley exercising a greyhound, a dejected animal which in the course of conversation Mr Hurley said was worth a fortune. ‘Is it the one that gets into the cement mixer?’ Kitty asked, and Mr Hurley explained that the greyhound only got into the cement mixer the odd time.
Kitty laughed shrilly. The trouble with a habit like that, she pointed out, was that the creature might get turned into concrete. ‘Will you take a stout, Mr Hurley? We brought home a few bottles.’
Mr Hurley instantly fell into step with them and when they arrived at the house he led them round to the back, incarcerating the greyhound in a shed on the way. ‘Sit down on a chair,’ he said in the kitchen and his wife produced glasses, saying it was unusual to have guests bringing drink back to St Agnes’s, but where was the harm in it? ‘Good luck!’ said Mr Hurley.
Details of the Wall of Death were given, and details of the wedding. The unexpected embrace of Mrs Kilfedder was retailed, and reference made to Kitty’s father singing ‘Lily of Laguna’ and to old Feehy without his collar or tie. ‘Poor Coddy Donnegan hadn’t the heart to attend,’ Kitty said. ‘He’s a fellow from the slaughterhouse, Mrs Hurley. I went out with poor Coddy for three years.’
‘They take it hard,’ agreed Mrs Hurley.
‘He cried, poor Coddy.’
‘I had a similar case myself. A fellow by the name of O’Gorman.’
‘A chancer,’ said Mr Hurley beneath his breath. ‘A real oiler.’
‘O’Gorman could have charmed the leaves off the trees. I heard him called the handsomest man in Tramore.’
‘The story is told,’ Mr Hurley said in the same low voice, ‘that he fecked a crucifix off a nun.’
‘ “Well, I’ll never marry now,” was what poor Coddy came out with when I told him. “I’ll keep myself by for you, Kitty.” ’
‘Where’d the point be in that, though?’ Mrs Hurley interposed. ‘Is poor Coddy a bit slow?’
‘It’s only his way of putting the thing, Mrs Hurley.’
The dozen bottles took an hour to drink, during which time Mr Hurley gave Davy a number of racing tips. He talked about famous greyhounds he had known or had even had a hand in the breeding of, but Davy was more interested in what the two women were discussing and was unable to prevent himself from listening. He heard Kitty saying the husband she’d married would do anything for you. He watched her leaning closer to Mrs Hurley and heard her referring to the cousin of Father Tolan. ‘Errah, go on, are you serious?’ Mrs Hurley exclaimed, glancing across at him, and he guessed at once what she’d been told – that the lapse of the priest’s cousin had determined him in his vocation, that God had gained in the end.
‘Held back all summer,’ Mr Hurley continued. ‘Put every penny in your pocket on him.’
Davy promised he would, although he had never in his life backed a horse and hadn’t heard what the one Mr Hurley recommended was called. Kitty stood up and was swaying back and forth, her eyes blearily staring. ‘I don’t know should I have eaten the ginger-snaps,’ she muttered uneasily, but Mrs Hurley said a ginger-snap never did anyone any harm. Mr Hurley was talking about another horse, and Davy kept nodding.
‘You’re a good man,’ the landlady whispered as he went by her. He had one arm around Kitty, holding her up. He shook his head, silently disclaiming the goodness Mrs Hurley imbued him with.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked Kitty on the stairs, and she didn’t reply until they were in the bedroom, when she said she wasn’t. He lifted the china jug out of the basin on the wash-stand and after she had finished being sick he carried the basin across the landing to the lavatory.
‘God, I’m sorry, pet,’ she managed to say before she fell asleep, lying across the bed.
Even though she couldn’t hear him, he said it didn’t matter. It had never occurred to him before that a cousin of Father Tolan’s who came to the parish for his holidays must have attended Mass on Sundays, yet he had never seen him there. Nor had he ever heard anyone else but Kitty mention him. She had painted a picture of a saintly young man who had since become a priest, and in her befuddled state she’d wanted Mrs Hurley to know about him too. She had wanted Mrs Hurley to know that it wasn’t anything crude that had occurred, like going with Coddy Donnegan in the back of a bloodstained Vauxhall.
‘It’s all right, Kitty.’ He spoke aloud, sitting beside her on the bed, looking down into her face. In the bedroom there was the rancid smell of her vomit; her breath as he pulled the dress over her head was cloyed with it. Again he looked down into her face, understanding why she had told the lies. When she’d approached Coddy Donnegan after Mass that day he’d probably retorted that she’d let herself get into that condition in order to catch him.
Davy stood up and slowly took his clothes off. He was lucky that she had gone with Coddy Donnegan because if she hadn’t she wouldn’t now be sleeping on their honeymoon bed. Once more he looked down into her face: for eighteen years she had seemed like a queen to him and now, miraculously, he had the right to kiss her. He straightened her slackened body, moving her arms and legs until she was lying comfortably. Slowly he pulled the bed-clothes up and turned the light out; then he lay beside her and caressed her in the darkness. He had come to the farm with a label round his neck; he had come out of nowhere, from rooms and corridors that were as bleakly anonymous as the orphan home’s foundling inmates. He had been known as her father’s hired man, but now he would be known as her husband. That was how people would refer to him, and in the end it wouldn’t matter when she talked about Coddy Donnegan, or lowered her voice to mention the priest’s cousin. It was natural that she should do so since she had gained less than he had from their marriage.
The Printmaker
In the large room Charlotte hangs her prints to dry, like clothes on clothes lines. Three crows, framed by the legs and belly of a cow, have rested for an instant beneath its udder: all over the room this stark image is multiplied, in black and white and tones of green.
The reality was years ago, in France: Charlotte senses that confidently, without being able to recall the moment of observation. Familiar to her is the feeling that a glance from the window, or from a motor-car, has been retained for half a lifetime. ‘This is still the Langevins’ land,’ Monsieur Langevin said in English, the first time he drove her in his white Citroën the fifteen kilometres from Massuery to St Cérase. Obediently she inspected the fields to her right, treeless and uninteresting, cattle grazing. Perhaps there were three crows also.
In the room the suspended sheets are scrutinized, and one in every seven or eight rejected. Fragile, tapering fingers loosen the tiny, variously coloured pegs that hold the prints in place; each inferior reproduction floats softly to the bare-wood floor. Intent upon her task, Charlotte moves silently in the room, seeming almost a ghost among the ubiquitous repetition of what she has created. At thirty-nine she is as slender as ever, her bones as apparent as her flesh. Bright azure eyes illuminate a face that is still a girl’s. Shattered only twice in Charlotte’s appearance is the illusion that time has been defeated; grey strands creep through hair that once was as pale as corn, and on the backs of her hands are the reminders that sun and weather do not pass gently by.