Brooklyn (31 page)

As they posed for photographs outside the cathedral, the sun came out fully and many onlookers came to view the bride and bridegroom getting ready to travel to Wexford in a large hired car decorated with ribbons.

At the wedding breakfast, Eilis spoke to Jim Farrell on one side and on the other a brother of George's who had come home from England for the wedding. She was watched fondly and carefully by her mother. It struck her as almost funny that every time her mother put a morsel of food into her mouth she looked over to check that Eilis was still there and Jim Farrell firmly to her right and that they seemed to be having an agreeable time. George Sheridan's mother, she saw, looked like an elderly duchess who had been left with nothing except a large hat, some old jewellery and her immense dignity.

Later, after the speeches, when photographs were being taken of the bride and bridegroom, and then the bride with her family and the bridegroom with his, Eilis's mother sought her out and whispered to her that she had found a lift to Enniscorthy for herself and the two O'Brien girls. Her mother's tone was nearly too pleased and conspiratorial. Eilis realized that Jim Farrell would believe that her mother had engineered this and she realized also that there was nothing she could do to let him know that she had not been involved. As she and Jim were watching the car going off, and cheering the newly married couple, they were approached by Nancy 's mother, who was in a state of happiness, aided, Eilis thought, by many glasses of sherry and some wine and champagne.

"So, Jim," she said, "I'm not the only one who says that the next outing we'll all have will be your big day. Nancy will have plenty of advice to give you when she comes home, Eilis."

She began to laugh in a cackling way that Eilis thought was unseemly. Eilis looked around to make sure that no one was paying them any attention. Jim Farrell, she saw, was staring coldly at Mrs. Byrne.

"Little did we think," Mrs. Byrne went on, "that we'd have Nancy in Sheridan 's, and I hear the Farrells are moving out to Glenbrien, Eilis."

The expression on Mrs. Byrne's face was one of sweet insinuation; Eilis wondered if she might make an excuse and simply run towards the ladies' so that she would not have to listen to her any more. But then, she thought, she would be leaving Jim on his own with her.

"Jim and I promised my mother we'd make sure she knows where the car is," Eilis said quickly, pulling Jim by the sleeve of his jacket towards her.

"Oh, Jim and I!" exclaimed Mrs. Byrne, who sounded like a woman from the outskirts of the town making her way home on a Saturday night. "Do you hear her? Jim and I! Oh, it won't be long now and we'll all have a great day out and your mother'll be delighted, Eilis. When she came down with the wedding present the other day she told us she'd be delighted and why wouldn't she be delighted?"

"We have to go, Mrs. Byrne," Eilis said. "Can you excuse us?"

As they walked away Eilis turned towards Jim and narrowed her eyes and shook her head. "Imagine having her as a mother-inlaw!" she said.

It was, she thought, merely a small act of disloyalty, but it would prevent Jim from thinking that she had anything to do with Mrs. Byrne in her present state.

Jim managed a wintry smile. "Can we go?" he asked.

"Yes," she said, "my mother knows exactly where the lift to Enniscorthy is. There is no need for us to stay here any longer." She tried to sound imperious and in control.

They drove out of the car park of the Talbot Hotel and along the quays and then crossed the bridge. Eilis decided that she would put no further thought into what her mother might have said to Mrs. Byrne or, indeed, what Mrs. Byrne herself had said. And if Jim wanted to, and if it helped to explain his silence and the rigid set of his jaw, then he could do so all he pleased. She was determined not to speak until he did and not to do anything to distract him or cheer him up.

As they turned towards Curracloe, he finally spoke. "My mother asked me to let you know that the golf club is going to inaugurate a prize in memory of Rose. It will be given by the lady captain as a special trophy on Lady Captain's Day for the best score by a lady newcomer to the club. Rose, she says, was always really nice to people who were new to the town."

"Yes," Eilis said, "she was always good with new people, that's true."

"Well, they're having a reception to announce the prize next week and my mother thought that you could come to tea with us and then we'd go out to the golf club for the reception."

"That would be very nice," Eilis said. She was about to say that her mother would be pleased when she told her the news but she thought that they had heard enough about her mother for one day.

He parked the car and they walked down towards the strand. Although it was still warm, there was a strong haze, almost a mist, over the sea. They began to walk north towards Ballyconnigar. She felt relaxed with Jim now that they were away from the wedding and happy that he had not mentioned what Mrs. Byrne had said and did not seem to be thinking about it.

Once they had passed Ballyvaloo, they found a place in the dunes where they could sit comfortably. Jim sat down first and then made space for her so that she was resting against him with her back to him. He put his arms around her.

There was no one else on the strand. They looked at the waves crashing gently on the soft sand, remaining for some time without speaking.

"Did you enjoy the wedding?" he asked eventually.

"Yes, I did," she replied.

"So did I," he said. "It's always funny for me seeing everyone's brothers and sisters because I'm an only child. I think it must have been hard for you losing your sister. Today, watching George with his brothers and Nancy with her sisters made me feel strange."

"Was it difficult being an only child?"

"It matters more now, I think," Jim said, "when my parents are getting older and there's just me. But maybe it mattered in other ways. I was never really good at getting on with people. I could talk to customers in the pub and all that, I knew how to do that. But I mean friends. I was never good at making friends. I always felt that people didn't like me, or didn't know what to make of me."

"But surely you have a lot of friends."

"Not really," he said, "and then it was harder when they started having girlfriends. I always found it difficult to talk to girls. Do you remember that night when I met you first?"

"You mean in the Athenaeum."

"Yes," he said. "On the way into the hall that night Alison Prendergast, who I was sort of going out with, broke it off with me. I knew it was coming but she actually did it on the way into the dance. And then George, I knew, really fancied Nancy and she was there. So he could be with her. And then he brought you over and I had seen you in the town and I liked you and you were on your own and you were so nice and friendly. I thought-here we go again. If I ask her to dance I'll be tongue-tied, but I still thought I should. I hated standing there on my own, but I couldn't bring myself to ask you."

"You should have," she said.

"And then when I heard you were gone I thought it was just my luck."

"I remember you that night," she said. "I had the impression you didn't like us, both me and Nancy."

"And then when I heard you were home," he said as though he had not been listening, "and I saw you and you looked so fantastic and I was so down after the whole episode with Nancy 's sister, I thought that I'd do anything to meet you again."

He pulled her closer to him and put his hands on her breasts. She could hear him breathing heavily.

"Can we talk about what you are going to do?" he asked.

"Of course," she replied.

"I mean if you have to go back, then maybe we could get engaged before you go."

"Maybe we can talk about it soon," she said.

"I mean, if I lost you this time, well, I don't know how to put it, but…"

She turned around towards him and they began to kiss and they stayed there until the mist became heavier and the first hints of the night coming down, then they walked back towards the car and drove to Enniscorthy.

A few days later a note came from Jim's mother formally inviting Eilis to tea the following Thursday and telling her about the reception in the golf club to honour Rose, which they could attend afterwards. Eilis showed the letter to her mother and asked her if she would like to go to the reception as well, but her mother said no, it would be too sad for her, and she was happy for Eilis to go with the Farrells and thus represent the family.

It rained all the following weekend. Jim called on the Saturday and they went to Rosslare and had dinner in the evening in the Strand Hotel. As they were lingering over the dessert, she was tempted to tell him everything, to ask him for his help, even his advice. He was, she thought, good, and he was also wise and clever in certain ways, but he was conservative. He liked his position in the town, and it mattered to him that he ran a respectable pub and came from a respectable family. He had never done anything unusual in his life, and, she thought, he never would. His version of himself and the world did not include the possibility of spending time with a married woman and, even worse, a woman who had not told him or anybody else that she was married.

She looked at his kind face in the soft light of the hotel restaurant and decided that she would tell him nothing now. They drove to Enniscorthy. At home as she looked at the letters from Tony stored in the chest of drawers in her bedroom, some of them still unopened, she realized that there would never be a time to tell him. It could not be said; his response to her deception could not be imagined. She would have to go back.

Once the event in the golf club was over, she decided, she would pick a date. For some time now, she had postponed writing to Father Flood, or Miss Fortini, or Mrs. Kehoe, explaining her extended absence. She would write, she determined, over the next few days. She would try not to postpone any further what she had to do. But the prospect of telling her mother the date of her departure and the prospect of saying goodbye to Jim Farrell still filled her with fear, enough for her once more to put both ideas out of her mind. She would think about them soon, she thought, but not now.

On the day before the event at the golf club she had gone alone in the early afternoon to the graveyard to visit Rose's grave again. It had been drizzling and she carried an umbrella. Once she arrived in the graveyard, she noticed that the wind was almost cold, even though it was early July. In this grey, blustery light the graveyard where Rose lay seemed a bare and forlorn place, no trees, nothing much growing, just rows of headstones and paths and underneath all the silence of the dead. Eilis saw names on headstones that she recognized, the parents or grandparents of her friends from school, men and women whom she remembered well, all gone now, held here on the edge of the town. For the moment, most of them were remembered by the living, but it was a memory slowly fading as each season passed.

She stood at Rose's grave and tried to pray or whisper something. She felt sad, she thought, and maybe that was enough-to come here and let Rose's spirit know how much she was missed. But she could not cry or say anything. She stood at the grave for as long as she could and then walked away, feeling the sharpest grief as she was actually leaving the graveyard itself and walking towards Summerhill and the Presentation Convent.

When she reached the corner of Main Street, she decided that she would walk through the town rather than go along the Back Road. Seeing faces, people moving, shops doing business, she thought, might cure her of the gnawing sadness, almost guilt, that she felt about Rose, about not being able to speak properly to her or pray for her.

She passed the cathedral on the opposite side and was making her way towards the Market Square when she heard someone calling her name. When she looked, she saw that Mary, who worked for Miss Kelly, was shouting at her and beckoning to her to cross the road.

"Is there something wrong?" Eilis asked.

"Miss Kelly wants to see you," Mary said. She was almost out of breath and looked frightened. "She says I'm to make sure and bring you back with me now."

"Now?" Eilis asked, laughing.

"Now," Mary repeated.

Miss Kelly was waiting at the door.

"Mary," she said, "we are going upstairs for a minute and if anyone is looking for me, then tell them I'll be down in my own good time."

"Yes, miss."

Miss Kelly opened the entrance to the part of the building where she lived and ushered Eilis in. As Eilis closed the door behind her, Miss Kelly led her up a dark stairway to the living room, which looked onto the street but seemed almost as dark as the stairwell and had, Eilis thought, too much furniture in it. Miss Kelly pointed to a chair covered in newspapers.

"Put those on the floor and sit down," she said.

Miss Kelly sat opposite her on a faded-looking leather armchair.

"So how are you getting on?" she asked.

"Very well, thanks, Miss Kelly."

"So I hear. And I was just thinking about you yesterday and wondering if I would ever see you because I heard from Madge Kehoe in America just yesterday."

"Madge Kehoe?" Eilis asked.

"She'd be Mrs. Kehoe to you but she's a cousin of mine. She was, before she married, a Considine, and my mother, God rest her, was a Considine, and so we are first cousins."

"She never mentioned that," Eilis said.

"Oh, the Considines were always very close," Miss Kelly said. "My mother was the same."

Miss Kelly's tone was almost skittish; it was, Eilis thought, as though she were doing an imitation of herself. Eilis asked herself if it could possibly be true that Miss Kelly was a cousin of Mrs. Kehoe.

"Is that right?" Eilis asked coldly.

"And of course she told me all about you when you arrived first. But then there was no news here and Madge has a policy that she only keeps in touch with you if you keep in touch with her. So what I do is I telephone her about twice a year. I never stay long on the line because of the cost. But it keeps her happy, especially if there is news. And then when you came home, well, that was news and I heard you were never out of Curracloe, and in Courtown with your finery, and then a little bird who happens to be a customer of mine told me that he took a photograph of you all in Cush Gap. He said you made a lovely group."