There were other faces in the Rhett Butler Room, those of Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh reproduced on mirrored glass with bevelled edges, huge images that also included the shoulders of the film stars, the décolletage of one, the frilled evening shirt of the other. Clark Gable was subtly allowed the greater impact; in Scarlett’s Lounge, together on a single mirror, the two appeared to be engaged in argument, he crossly pouting from a distance, she imperious in close-up.
‘This man here, you mean?’ Grania said to her husband when there was an opportunity. She knew he did; there was no one else he could mean. She didn’t want to think about it, yet it had to be confirmed. She wanted to delay the knowledge, yet just as much she had to know quickly.
‘So he’s been saying,’ Desmond said. ‘You know, I’d forgotten who he was when you introduced us.’
‘But what on earth does he want to come and live in that awful old house for?’
‘He’s on his uppers apparently.’
Often they talked together on these Saturday occasions, in much the same way as they did in their own kitchen while she finished cooking the dinner and he laid the table. In the kitchen they talked about people they’d run into during the day, the same people once a week or so, rarely strangers. When his father retired almost twenty years ago, Desmond had taken over the management of the town’s laundry and later had inherited it. The Tara Hotel was his second most important customer, the Hospital of St Bernadette of Lourdes being his first. He brought back to Grania reports of demands for higher wages, and the domestic confidences of his staff. In return she passed on gossip, which both of them delighted in.
‘How’s Judith?’ Martin Duddy inquired, finger and thumb again tightening on her elbow. ‘No Mr Bloody yet?’
‘Judith’s still at the convent, remember.’
‘You never know these days.’
‘I think you’ve got it wrong about Aisling being pregnant.’
‘I pray to God I have, dear.’
Desmond said he intended to go to Hetty Prendergast’s funeral, but she saw no reason why she should go herself. Desmond went to lots of funerals, often of people she didn’t know, business acquaintances who’d lived miles away. Going to funerals was different when there was a business reason, not that the Prendergasts had ever made much use of the laundry.
‘I have a soft spot for Judith,’ Martin Duddy said. ‘She’s getting to be a lovely girl.’
It was difficult to agree without sounding smug, yet it seemed disloyal to her daughter to deny what was claimed for her. Grania shrugged, a gesture that was vague enough to indicate whatever her companion wished to make of it. There was no one on Martin Duddy’s other side because the table ended there. Angela, widow of a German businessman, had just sat down in the empty place opposite him. The most glamorous of all the wives, tall and slim, her hair the colour of very pale sand, Angela was said to be on the look-out for a second marriage. Her husband had settled in the neighbourhood after the war and had successfully begun a cheese-and-pâté business, supplying restaurants and hotels all over the country. With a flair he had cultivated in her, Angela ran it now. ‘How’s Martin?’ She smiled seductively across the table, the way she’d smiled at men even in her husband’s lifetime. Martin Duddy said he was all right, but Grania knew that only a desultory conversation would begin between the two because Martin Duddy didn’t like Angela for some reason, or else was alarmed by her.
‘Judith always has a word for you,’ he said. ‘Rare, God knows, in a young person these days.’
‘Who’s that?’ Angela leaned forward, her eyes indicating the stranger.
She was told, and Grania watched her remembering him. Angela had been pregnant with the third of her sons that August afternoon. ‘Uncomfortably warm,’ she now recalled, nodding in recollection.
Martin Duddy displayed no interest. He’d been at the club that afternoon and he remembered the arrival of the stranger, but an irritated expression passed over his tightly made face while Grania and Angela agreed about the details of the afternoon in question: he resented the interruption and wished to return to the subject of daughters.
‘What I’m endeavouring to get at, Grania, is what would you say if Judith came back with some fellow old enough to be her father?’
‘Mavis didn’t say Aisling’s friend was as old as that.’
‘Aisling wrote us a letter, Grania. There are lines to read between,’
‘Well, naturally I’d prefer Judith to marry someone of her own age. But of course it all depends on the man.’
‘D’you find a daughter easy, Grania? There’s no one thinks more of Aisling than myself. The fonder you are the more worry there is. Would you say that was right, Grania?’
‘Probably.’
‘You’re lucky in Judith, though. She has a great way with her.’
Angela was talking to Tom Crosbie about dairy products. The Crosbies were an example of a marriage in which there was a considerable age difference, yet it appeared not to have had an adverse effect. Trish had had four children, two girls and two boys; they were a happy, jolly family, even though when Trish married it had been widely assumed that she was not in love, was if anything still yearning after Billy MacGuinness. It was even rumoured that Trish had married for money, since Tom Crosbie owned Boyd Motors, the main Ford franchise in the neighbourhood. Trish’s family had once been well-to-do but had somehow become penurious.
‘What’s Judith going to do for herself ? Nursing, is it, Grania?’
‘If it is she’s never mentioned it.’
‘I only thought it might be.’
‘There’s talk about college. She’s not bad at languages.’
‘Don’t send her to Dublin, dear. Keep the girl by you. D’you hear what I’m saying, Desmond?’ Martin Duddy raised his voice, shouting across Grania. He began all over again, saying he had a soft spot for Judith, explaining about the letter that had arrived from Aisling. Grania changed places with him. ‘Martin’s had a few,’ Angela said.
‘He’s upset about Aisling. She’s going out with an older man.’
She shouldn’t have said it with Tom Crosbie sitting there. She made a face to herself and leaned across the table to tell him he was looking perky. As soon as she’d spoken she felt she’d made matters worse, that her remark could be taken to imply he was looking young for his years.
‘There’s a new place,’ Angela said when Grania asked her about her dress. ‘ “Pursestrings”. D’you know it?’
Ever since she’d become a widow Angela had gone to Dublin to buy something during the week before each Saturday dinner. Angela liked to be first, though often Francie ran her close. Mavis tried to keep up with them but couldn’t quite. Grania sometimes tried too; Helen didn’t mind what she wore.
‘Is Desmond going to the funeral?’ Tom Crosbie asked in his agreeable way – perhaps, Grania thought, to show that no offence had been taken.
‘Yes, he is.’
‘Desmond’s very good.’
That was true. Desmond was good. He’d been the pick of the tennis club when she’d picked him herself, the pick of the town. Looking round the table – at Tom Crosbie’s bald head and Kevy Haddon’s joylessness, at the simian lines of Quilty’s cheeks and Billy MacGuinness’s tendency to glow, Martin Duddy’s knotted features – she was aware that, on top of everything else, Desmond had worn better than any of them. He had acquired authority in middle age; the reticence of his youth had remained, but time had displayed that he was more often right than wrong, and his opinion was sought in a way it once had not been. Desmond was quietly obliging, a quality more appreciated in middle age than in youth. Mavis had called him a dear when he was still a bachelor.