‘I heard about that guy,’ Mavis said. ‘So that’s what he looks like.’
That August Saturday in 1972 he’d come to the tennis club on a bicycle, in whites he had borrowed at the house where he was staying, a racquet tied with string to the crossbar. He’d told Grania afterwards that Hetty Prendergast had looked the whites out for him and had lent him the racquet as well. Hetty had mentioned the tennis club, to which she and her husband had years ago belonged themselves. ‘Of course a different kind of lot these days,’ she’d said. ‘Like everywhere.’ He’d pushed the bicycle through the gate and stood there watching a doubles game, not yet untying his racquet. ‘Who on earth’s that?’ someone had said, and Grania approached him after about a quarter of an hour, since she was at that time the club’s secretary and vaguely felt it to be her duty.
Sipping the Martini Mavis had claimed to owe her, Grania remembered the sudden turning of his profile in her direction when she spoke and then his smile. Nothing of what she subsequently planned had entered her head then; she would have been stunned by even the faintest inkling of it. ‘I’m awfully sorry,’ he’d said. ‘I’m barging in.’
Grania had been twenty-seven then, married to Desmond for almost eight years. Now she was forty-three, and her cool brown eyes still strikingly complemented the lips that Desmond had once confessed he’d wanted to kiss ever since she was twelve. Her dark hair had been in plaits at twelve, later had been fashionably long, and now was short. She wasn’t tall and had always wished she was, but at least she didn’t have to slim. She hadn’t become a mother yet, that Saturday afternoon when the stranger arrived at the tennis club. But she was happy, and in love with Desmond.
‘Aisling’s going out with some chartered accountant,’ Mavis said, speaking about her daughter. ‘Martin’s hopping mad.’
The Quiltys arrived. Grania watched while they joined Desmond and their dinner guest. Desmond moved to the bar to buy them drinks. Quilty – a small man who reminded Grania of a monkey – lit a cigarette. Politely, Grania transferred her attention to her friend. Why should Martin be angry? she asked, genuinely not knowing. She could tell from Mavis’s tone of voice that she was not displeased herself.
‘Because he’s nine years older. We had a letter from Aisling this morning. Martin’s talking about going up to have it out with her.’
‘That might make it worse, actually.’
‘If he mentions it will you tell him that? He listens to you, you know.’
Grania said she would. She knew Martin Duddy would mention it, since he always seemed to want to talk to her about things that upset him. Once upon a time, just before she’d become engaged to Desmond, he’d tried to persuade her he loved her.
‘They earn a fortune,’ Mavis said. ‘Chartered accountants.’
Soon after that they all began to move into the Rhett Butler Room. Grania could just remember the time when the hotel had been called O’Hara’s Commercial, in the days of Mr and Mrs O’Hara. It wasn’t all that long ago that their sons, giving the place another face-lift as soon as they inherited it, had decided to change the name to the Tara and to give the previously numbered bedrooms titles such as ‘Ashley’s’ and ‘Melanie’s’. The bar was known as Scarlett’s Lounge. There were regular discos in Belle’s Place.
‘Who’s that fellow with the Quiltys?’ Francie MacGuinness asked, and Grania told her.
‘He’s come back for Hetty Prendergast’s funeral.’
‘God, I didn’t know she died.’
As always, several tables had been pushed together to form a single long one in the centre of the dining-room. At it, the couples who’d been drinking in the bar sat as they wished: there was no formality. Una Carty-Carroll, Trish Crosbie’s sister, was unmarried but was usually partnered on these Saturday occasions by the surveyor from the waterworks. This was so tonight. At one end of the table a place remained unoccupied: Angela, outside the circle of best friends, as Una Carty-Carroll and Mary Ann Haddon were, invariably came late. In a distant corner of the Rhett Butler Room one other couple were dining. Another table, recently occupied, was being tidied.
‘I think it’s Monday,’ Grania said when Francie asked her when the funeral was.
She hoped he’d go away again immediately. That other Saturday he’d said he found it appallingly dull at the Prendergasts’, a call of duty, no reason in the world why he should ever return. His reassurances had in a way been neither here nor there at the time, but afterwards of course she’d recalled them. Afterwards, many times, she’d strained to establish every single word of the conversation they’d had.
‘D’you remember poor old Hetty,’ Francie said, ‘coming in to the club for a cup of tea once? Ages ago.’
‘Yes, I remember her.’
A small woman, they remembered, a frail look about her face. There was another occasion Francie recalled: when the old woman became agitated because one of Wm. Cole’s meal lorries had backed into her Morris Minor. ‘I thought she’d passed on years ago,’ Francie said.
They separated. Helen was sitting next to him, Grania noticed, Quilty on his other side. Presumably they’d talk over whatever business there was, so that he wouldn’t have to delay once the funeral had taken place.
‘How’re you doing, dear?’ Martin Duddy said, occupying the chair on her left. Desmond was on her right; he nearly always chose to sit next to her.
‘I’m all right,’ she replied. ‘Are you OK, Martin?’
‘Far from it, as a matter of fact.’ He twisted backwards and stretched an arm out, preventing the waitress who was attempting to pass by from doing so. ‘Bring me a Crested Ten, will you? Aisling’s in the family way,’ he muttered into Grania’s ear. ‘Jesus Christ, Grania!’
He was an architect, responsible for the least attractive bungalows in the county, possibly in the province. He and Mavis had once spent a protracted winter holiday in Spain, the time he’d been endeavouring to find himself. He hadn’t done so, but that period of his life had ever since influenced the local landscape. Also, people said, his lavatories didn’t work as well as they might have.
‘Do you mean it, Martin? Are you sure?’
‘Some elderly Mr Bloody. I’ll wring his damn neck for him.’
He was drunk to the extent that failing to listen to him wouldn’t matter. No opportunity for comment would be offered. The advice sought, the plea for understanding, would not properly register in the brain that set in motion the requests. It was extremely unlikely that Aisling was pregnant.
‘Old Hetty left him the house,’ Desmond said on her other side. ‘He’s going to live in it. Nora,’ he called out to the waitress, ‘I need to order the wine.’
Martin Duddy gripped her elbow, demanding the return of her attention. His face came close to hers: the small, snub nose, the tightly hunched, heated cheeks, droplets of perspiration on forehead and chin. Grania looked away. Across the table, Mavis was better-looking than her husband in all sorts of ways, her lips prettily parted as she listened to whatever it was Billy MacGuinness was telling her about, her blue eyes sparkling with Saturday-evening vivacity. Francie was listening to the surveyor. Mary Ann Haddon was nervously playing with her fork, the way she did when she felt she was being ignored: she had a complex about her looks, which were not her strong point. Helen Quilty was talking to the man who’d come back for the funeral, her wide mouth swiftly opening and closing. Francie, who’d given up smoking a fortnight ago, lit a cigarette. Billy MacGuinness’s round face crinkled with sudden laughter. Mavis laughed also.
The waitress hurried away with Desmond’s wine order. Light caught one lens of Mary Ann’s glasses. ‘Oh, I don’t believe you!’ Francie cried, her voice for a single instant shrill above the buzz of conversation. The man who’d come back to attend the old woman’s funeral still listened politely. Trish – the smallest, most demure of the wives – kept nodding while Kevy Haddon spoke in his dry voice, his features drily matching it.