‘Perhaps we could be married?’ he pressed blindly.
‘No. You wouldn’t ask so lightly if we could.’
‘We wouldn’t have much at first but we would have one another and we could work,’ he pursued.
‘No. I’m sorry. I like you very much, but it cannot be. My mind has been made up for a long time.’
‘Well, one last time, then,’ he cut her short.
‘Hadn’t we the whole night?’
‘One last time.’ His hands insisted: and as soon as it was over he was sorry, left with less than if it had never taken place.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
‘It doesn’t matter.’
After they had paid downstairs, they did not want to eat in the hotel, though the grill room was serving breakfast. They went to one of the big plastic and chrome places on O’Connell Street. They ate slowly in uneasy silence.
‘I hope you’ll forgive me, if there’s anything to forgive,’ she said after a long time.
‘I was going to ask the same thing. There’s nothing to forgive. I wanted to see you again, to go on seeing you. I never thought I’d have the luck to meet someone so open … so unafraid.’ He was entangled in his own words before he’d finished.
‘I’m not like that at all.’ She laughed as she hadn’t for a long time. ‘I’m a coward. I’m frightened of next week. I’m frightened by most things.’
‘Why don’t you take an address that’ll always find me in case you change your mind?’
‘I’ll not change.’
‘I thought that once too.’
‘No. I’ll not. I can’t,’ she said, but he still wrote the address and slipped it in her pocket.
‘You can throw it away as soon as I’m out of sight.’
As they rose he saw that her eyes were filled with tears.
They now leaned completely on those small acts of ceremony that help us better out of life than any drug. He paid at the cash desk and waited afterwards while she fixed her scarf, smiled ruefully as he stood aside to allow her the inside of the stairs, opened the large swing-door at the bottom of the steps. They walked slowly to the bus stop. At the stop they tried to foretell the evening’s weather by the dark cloudy appearance of the sky towards the west. The only thing that seemed certain was that there’d be more rain. They shook hands as the bus came in. He waited until all the passengers had got on and it had moved away.
The river out beyond the Custom House, the straight quays, seemed to stretch out in the emptiness after she had gone. In my end is my beginning, he recalled. In my beginning is my end, his and hers, mine and thine. It seemed to stretch out, complete as the emptiness, endless as a wedding ring. He knew it like his own breathing. There might well be nothing, but she was still prepared to live by that one thing, to will it true.
Thinking of her, he found himself walking eagerly towards the Busarus … but almost as quickly his walking slowed. His steps grew hesitant, as if he was thinking of turning back. He knew that no matter how eagerly he found himself walking in any direction it could only take him to the next day and the next.
Eddie Mac
The summer Annie May Moran came to work for Mrs Kirkwood was the great year of St Michael’s football. The team had reached the Final of the Senior Cup for the second year running. Eddie Mac was their star, their finest forward. He worked for the Kirkwoods and lived in the three-roomed herdsman’s cottage at the end of the yard, its galvanized roof sprayed the same shade of green as the stables. The two Kirkwoods, father and son, old William and young Master William, went to Roscommon to watch the Final. They barely understood the game and were not touched by the wild fever that emptied the countryside on that late August Sunday: ‘We went because Eddie was playing. His father would have enjoyed this day, had he stayed.’
Annie May helped Mrs Kirkwood set the dinner table in the front room that afternoon while the game was being played. Mrs Kirkwood went to particular care with the linen and silver, and the best set of bone china was on display. The Nutleys of Oakport, the oldest and last of her local friends, were coming to dinner that evening. When she was satisfied with the arrangement of the room and had checked the food, she took her book and sat in the rocking chair in the library, where, looking out on the lawn and white paling and the winding avenue of copper and green beech, she rocked herself to sleep as she did every day at this hour.
Exploding cans of carbide, random shouts and cheers and whistles as fires were lit on the hills and on every cross on the roadways woke her early. St Michael’s had won the Senior Cup for the first time since its founding. She rose and came down to Annie May in the kitchen. ‘It’s an unmitigated disaster,’ she confided to the servant girl. ‘It was bad enough last year, and they lost. What’ll it be like now that they have won?’
‘Eddie was the hero,’ William Kirkwood announced when they returned from Roscommon. ‘The two goals he scored in the second half won the game — it broke the other team’s heart. They carried him on their shoulders all around the field with the cup at the end.’ Annie May coloured as he spoke. She was already in love with the young herdsman who had yet to acknowledge her presence in the house.
A week later, the big silver cup arrived in Kirkwood’s yard on its round of the parish, the red and green ribbons streaming from the handles. Again Eddie Mac was hoisted on shoulders and carried aloft with the cup to his own door. Inside the small house the cup was filled to the brim with whiskey. Cheers rang out as each person drank from the cup. A large bonfire was set ablaze in the middle of the yard. A melodeon started to play.
‘It’s so childish,’ Mrs Kirkwood complained in the big house. ‘We can abandon any hope of sleep tonight.’
‘They’re entitled to the night,’ her husband argued. ‘It’s a pity Eddie’s father isn’t around. He would have greatly enjoyed the night. They’ve had a famous victory.’
‘And they use it to get drunk! Is that a way to celebrate decently? Listen to that din down in the yard.’
‘I think you are too hard on them, Elisabeth,’ William Kirkwood countered gently.
At that time, Annie May was too young to go to the dances and Eddie Mac had not yet the reputation of a womanizer. He went with the one girl, Kathleen Duignan. She was tall and dark and they looked like brother and sister. As the Duignans owned land, they were a class above the Macs, and when Kathleen Duignan went to England at Christmas it was thought she had thrown Eddie over. He was never to go with another girl for so long.
A few months later, a torn knee in spring training was to end his football glory. Without him the team struggled through the early rounds of the championship, and when he returned for the semi-final he played poorly. The injury did not affect his walk but showed as soon as he tried to sprint or leap. His whole game was based on speed and anticipation. He had neither taste nor appetite for the rough and tumble. Now that his deadly grace was gone, his style of hanging back till the last moment looked like cowardice. As soon as it was plain that the cup was about to be lost, Eddie was taunted and jeered every time he went near the ball by the same people that had chaired him shoulder high from the field the year before. On the surface he showed no feeling, and walked stone-faced from the field; but on the following Wednesday, the evening every week he walked to the village to collect his copy of the Herald and to buy in a few groceries, he put his studded boots, football socks, togs, bandages in his green and red jersey, and by drawing the sleeves round and knotting them tightly made it a secure bundle, which he dropped in the deepest arch as he crossed the bridge into the village, only waiting long enough after the splash to be certain it had sunk.