‘There was only one Mr Kirkwood. There are many Kennedys.’ She smiled back.
When she saw him waiting for her later in the hotel foyer, the worn but well-cut blue pinstripe, the thick, lank grey hair, the jutting Anglo-Irish jaw, the military appearance of alertness, she knew that he was superior to most men she was likely to come on in the city, and she noticed how soft and long his hands were from years of gentle living. The hands of her own brothers were already large and coarse by comparison. They had two other meetings in the city before she agreed to come down and look over the big stone house and its grounds, but she had already made up her mind that she would marry William Kirkwood.
The first sight Annie May had of her the Sunday she came to the house was standing beneath the copper beech on the front avenue. A handbag hung from her shoulder. William Kirkwood was smiling on her. The flurry of the past weeks, the visits to Dublin, the need for ironed shirts and polished shoes fell into place. The pain that filled her chest climbed into a tight band about her forehead. That there was no one to blame, that it was in the natural order of things only made it more painful. She couldn’t even be angry.
They came to the big kitchen by way of the front door, looking in on the library and drawing-room, and Annie May heard her admiring the stairs.
‘What is this room with all the marble?’ she heard her ask as they drew closer.
‘It’s just a pantry now. In the old days it was the flower-cutting room … where the roses were cut.’
When they came through the door, there was nothing but smiles and handshakes, but it was extremely tense. If William Kirkwood knew more of human nature, he would have seen that the two women were territorial enemies.
‘Where’s Lucy?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know. She was here up to a minute ago,’ Annie May said and offered to make tea.
‘I’d love a cup of tea,’ Mary Kennedy said. ‘But first I’d like to see the upstairs rooms.’
While they were taking tea, after having spent a long time walking through the upstairs rooms, darkness fell but still there was no sight of Lucy.
‘She must have gone outside,’ Annie May said worriedly, her own anxiety already transferred to the child.
William Kirkwood walked Mary Kennedy over the fields to the road that led to her house. When they got to the house, it was full of the Kennedys and their families, most of whom William was meeting for the first time. It was a pleasant evening, and by its end it was clear to Mary that both William Kirkwood and the match were approved of. For his part, he liked the big old ramshackle farmhouse, the crowd of people, the lashings of food and whiskey, the natural cheerfulness of people enjoying themselves, the absence of formality and selfconsciousness, reminding him more of political celebration than a family evening. When he left, Mary walked with him to the avenue. On the walk she kissed him for the first time. She was planning the wedding for June. The house would have to be painted, new curtains bought, some new furniture chosen. ‘The whole house will have to be opened up again. As it stands, the kitchen is the only room that looks lived in.’
As he walked with her, he felt that the night was bathed in a dream of happiness, and would start in disbelief that this tall elegant high-spirited woman was about to become his wife. For her part, she felt that her girlish boast was coming true. She knew that she was going to love this strange man who spoke terms of endearment as if they were commands. ‘Venus, Mars, Saturn, Jupiter to the east over there.’ He was barking out the names in the clear sky, and she had to bite back laughter. She knew of men less knowledgeable about the stars who would be able to turn them to better advantage, but she would take care of that in her own time.
‘There’s one thing more,’ she said before they parted. ‘Annie May will have to be given notice.’
‘That I could never do,’ he said with such vehemence that it took her back. ‘She came as a very young girl to work for my mother. Lucy was born here, grew up here. I could never tell them to leave.’
When she saw how disturbed he was, she put her hand on his arm. ‘Don’t worry, love. You’ll not have to do anything. I doubt very much if Annie May will want to stay once she hears I am moving into the house in June.’
They were both standing still at the gate, and she turned and raised her lips to his, and he, feeling her body stir against his, took her into his arms.
His own house was in darkness when he got home. He knew the back door was unlocked, but rather than go through the empty kitchen he let himself in by the front door with his key. There he sat for a long time in the cold of the library. He had many things to think about, and not least among them was this: whether there was any way his marriage could take place without bringing suffering on two people who had been a great part of his life, who had done nothing themselves to deserve being driven out into a world they were hardly prepared for.
Bank Holiday
It had been unusual weather, hot for weeks, and the white morning mist above the river, making ghostly the figures crossing the metal bridge, seemed a certain promise that the good weather was going to last beyond the holiday. All week in the Department he had heard the girls talking of going down the country, of the ocean, and the dances in the carnival marquees. Already, across the river, queues were forming for the buses that went to the sea — Howth, Dollymount, Malahide. He, Patrick McDonough, had no plans for the holiday, other than to walk about the city, or maybe to go out into the mountains later. He felt a certain elation of being loose in the morning, as if in space. The solid sound of his walking shoes on the pavement seemed to belong to someone else, to be going elsewhere.
A year ago he had spent this holiday in the country, among the rooms and fields and stone walls he had grown up with, as he had spent it every year going back many years. His mother was still living, his father had died the previous February. The cruellest thing about that last holiday was to watch her come into the house speaking to his father of something she had noticed in the yard — a big bullfinch feeding on the wild strawberries of the bank, rust spreading in the iron of one of the sheds — and then to see her realize in the midst of speech that her old partner of the guaranteed responses was no longer there. They had been close. His father had continued to indulge her once great good looks long after they had disappeared.
That last holiday he had asked his mother to come and live with him in the city, but she had refused without giving it serious thought. ‘I’d be only in the way up there. I could never fit in with their ways now.’ He had gone down to see her as often as he was able to after that, which was most weekends, and had paid a local woman to look in on her every day. Soon he saw that his visits no longer excited her. She had even lost interest in most of the things around her, and whenever that interest briefly gleamed she turned not to him but to his dead father. When pneumonia took her in a couple of days just before Christmas, and her body was put down beside her husband’s in Aughawillian churchyard, he was almost glad. The natural wind now blew directly on him.
He sold the house and lands. The land had been rich enough to send him away to college, not rich enough to bring him back other than on holiday, and now this holiday was the first such in years that he had nowhere in particular to go, no one special to see, nothing much to do. As well as the dangerous elation this sense of freedom gave, he looked on it with some of the cold apprehension of an experiment.
Instead of continuing on down the quays, he crossed to the low granite wall above the river and stayed a long time staring down through the vaporous mist at the frenzy and filth of the low tide. He could have stood mindlessly there for most of the morning but he pulled himself away and continued on down the quays until he turned into Webb’s Bookshop.