They ate their prawn cocktails. The voices became louder. For a moment Grania’s eye was held by the man who had said, at first, that she didn’t remember him. A look was exchanged and persisted for a moment. Did he suspect that she had learnt already of his intention to live in the Prendergasts’ house? Would he have told her himself if they hadn’t been interrupted by Desmond?
‘Hetty was a nice old thing,’ Angela said. ‘I feel I’d like to attend her funeral myself.’
She glanced again in the direction of the stranger. Tom Crosbie began to talk about a court case that was causing interest. Martin Duddy got up and ambled out of the dining-room, and Desmond moved to where he’d been sitting so that he was next to his wife again. The waitresses were collecting the prawn-cocktail glasses. ‘Martin’s being a bore about this Aisling business,’ Desmond said.
‘Desmond, did Prendergast mention being married now?’
He looked down the table, and across it. He shook his head. ‘He hasn’t the look of being married. Another thing is, I have a feeling he’s called something else.’
‘Angela says she’s going to the funeral.’
One of the waitresses brought round plates of grilled salmon, the other offered vegetables. Martin Duddy returned with a glass of something he’d picked up in the bar, whiskey on ice it looked like. He sat between Desmond and Una Carty-Carroll, not seeming to notice that it wasn’t where he’d been sitting before.
Mavis’s back was reflected in the Rhett Butler mirror, the V of her black dress plunging deeply down her spine. Her movements, and those of Billy MacGuinness next to her, danced over the features of Clark Gable.
‘He might suit Angela,’ Desmond said. ‘You never know.’
That August afternoon Billy MacGuinness, who was a doctor, had been called away from the club, some complication with a confinement. ‘Damned woman,’ he’d grumbled unfeelingly, predicting an all-night job. ‘Come back to the house, Francie,’ Grania had invited when the tennis came to an end, and it was then that Desmond had noticed the young man attaching his tennis racquet to the crossbar of his bicycle and had issued the same invitation. Desmond had said he’d drive him back to the Prendergasts’ when they’d all had something to eat, and together they lifted his bicycle on to the boot of the car. ‘I’ve something to confess,’ Francie had said in the kitchen, cutting the rinds off rashers of bacon, and Grania knew what it would be because ‘I’ve something to confess’ was a kind of joke among the wives, a time-honoured way of announcing pregnancy. ‘You’re not!’ Grania cried, disguising envy. ‘Oh, Francie, how grand!’ Desmond brought them drinks, but Francie didn’t tell him, as Grania had guessed she wouldn’t. ‘February,’ Francie said. ‘Billy says it should be February.’
Billy telephoned while they were still in the kitchen, guessing where Francie was when there’d been no reply from his own number. He’d be late, as he’d predicted. ‘Francie’s pregnant,’ Grania told Desmond while Francie was still on the phone. ‘Don’t tell her I said.’
In the sitting-room they had a few more drinks while in the kitchen the bacon cooked on a glimmer of heat. All of them were still in their tennis clothes and nobody was in a hurry. Francie wasn’t because of the empty evening in front of her. Grania and Desmond weren’t because they’d nothing to do that evening. The young man who was staying with the Prendergasts was like a schoolboy prolonging his leave. The sipping of their gin, the idle conversation – the young man told about the town and the tennis club, told who Angela was, and which the Duddys were: all of it took on the pleasurable feeling of a party happening by chance. Desmond picked up the telephone and rang the Crosbies but Trish said they wouldn’t be able to get a babysitter or else of course they’d come over, love to. Eventually Desmond beat up eggs to scramble and Grania fried potato cakes and soda bread. ‘We’re none of us sober,’ Desmond said, offering a choice of white or red wine as they sat down to eat. Eartha Kitt sang ‘Just an Old-fashioned Girl’.
In the Rhett Butler Room Grania heard the tune again. ‘… and an old-fashioned millionaire’, lisped the cool, sensuous voice, each emphasis strangely accented. They’d danced to it among the furniture, of the sitting-room, Francie and the young man mostly, she and Desmond. ‘I’m sorry, darling,’ Desmond whispered, but she shook her head, refusing to concede that blame came into it. If it did, she might as well say she was sorry herself. ‘I have to get back,’ Francie said. ‘Cook something for Billy.’ Desmond said he’d drop her off on his way to the Prendergasts, but then he changed the record to ‘Love Grows’, and fell asleep as soon as the music began.
Francie didn’t want a lift. She wanted to walk because the air would do her good. ‘D’you trust me?’ Grania asked the young man, and he laughed and said he’d have to because he didn’t have a lamp on his bicycle. She’d hardly spoken to him, had been less aware of him than of Desmond’s apparent liking of him. With strangers Desmond was often like that. ‘What do you do?’ she asked in the car, suddenly shy in spite of all the gin and wine there’d been. He’d held her rather close when he’d danced with her, but she’d noticed he’d held Francie close too. Francie had kissed him goodbye. ‘Well, actually I’ve been working in a pub,’ he said. ‘Before that I made toast in the Marine Hotel in Bournemouth.’
She drove slowly, with extreme caution, through the narrow streets of the town. The public houses were closing; gaggles of men loitered near each, smoking or just standing. Youths thronged the pavement outside the Palm Grove fish-and-chip shop. Beyond the last of its lamp-posts the town straggled away to nothing, solitary cottages and bungalows gave way to fields. ‘I haven’t been to this house before,’ Grania said in a silence that had developed. Her companion had vouchsafed no further information about himself beyond the reference to a pub and making toast in Bournemouth. ‘They’ll be in bed,’ he said now. ‘They go to bed at nine.’
The headlights picked out trunks of trees on the avenue, then urns, and steps leading up to a hall door. White wooden shutters flanked the downstairs windows, the paint peeling, as it was on the iron balustrade of the steps. All of it was swiftly there, then lost: the car lights isolated a rose-bed and a seat on a lawn. ‘I won’t be a minute,’ he said, ‘unshackling this bike.’
She turned the lights off. The last of the August day hadn’t quite gone; a warm duskiness was scented with honeysuckle she could not see when she stepped out of the car. ‘You’ve been awfully good to me,’ he said, unknotting the strings that held the bicycle in place. ‘You and Desmond.’
In the Rhett Butler Room, now rowdy with laughter and raised voices, she didn’t want to look at him again, and yet she couldn’t help herself: waiting for her were the unblinking eyes, the hair brushed back from the sallow forehead, the high cheekbones. Angela would stand at the graveside and afterwards would offer him sympathy. Quilty would be there, Helen wouldn’t bother. ‘I’d say we all need a drink’: Grania could imagine Angela saying that, including Desmond in the invitation, gathering the three men around her. In the dark the bicycle had been wheeled away and propped against the steps. ‘Come in for a minute,’ he’d said, and she’d begun to protest that it was late, even though it wasn’t. ‘Oh, don’t be silly,’ he’d said.
She remembered in the garish hotel dining-room, the flash of his smile in the gloom, and how she’d felt his unblinking eyes caressing her. He reached out for her hand, and in a moment they were in a hall, the electric light turned on, a grandfather clock ticking at the bottom of the stairs. There was a hallstand, and square cream-and-terracotta tiles, brown engravings framed in oak, fish in glass cases. ‘I shall offer you a nightcap,’ he whispered, leading her into a flagged passage and then into a cavernous kitchen. ‘Tullamore Dew is what they have,’ he murmured. ‘Give every man his dew.’ She knew what he intended. She’d known it before they’d turned in at the avenue gates; she’d felt it in the car between them. He poured their drinks and then he kissed her, taking her into his arms as though that were simply a variation of their dancing together. ‘Dearest,’ he murmured, surprising her: she hadn’t guessed that he intended, also, the delicacy of endearments.