The Bright One (10 page)

Moira burst into the house, not stopping to close the door, throwing her handbag on the nearest chair. She was white-faced and agitated, and when Molly looked up – she was scrubbing the table top – she saw at once that her daughter had been crying. Indeed, her eyes were still brimming with tears which threatened to fall.

‘Oh, Moira love, whatever is the matter?' Molly cried. ‘And why would you be coming home in the middle of the morning?' It was not yet half-past ten. ‘Are you ill? Is that it?'

Or had she been sacked, Molly wondered? She prayed fervently that that wasn't the case, but with Moira it was always on the cards that either she would be dismissed from her job or that she would walk out on it in a fit of temper. Relations between Moira and her employer were always on a knife edge.

It would be dreadful if either of those things had happened. Quite the wrong time. Things were really bad, with James getting little work, and the twins no longer sending money home. (Though wasn't that my own fault, Molly thought. Wasn't I too independent?) Though it had increased a little on her eighteenth birthday, when she became a stylist, Moira's wage was small – and even smaller when she'd been given back what she said she must have for clothes and pocket money if she was to be halfway decent – but it was important, it made a difference. And it was regular.

All these thoughts flashed through Molly's mind with the speed of light, while at the same time she dried off the table top.

‘What is it?' she repeated. ‘Has something happened at work? Have you quarrelled with Miss Glenda?'

The tears spilled over now, like drops of crystal from a fountain. Moira's eyes also held a bright spark of anger as she returned her mother's look. Trust Mammy to think that it was to do with work! As if that could possibly make her feel so terrible! And naturally to imply that she was to blame! How could she be so lacking in understanding?

‘No, it is not!' she sobbed.

Molly glanced at James, who had bought a newspaper and was studying the racing page. He raised his eyebrows and shook his head in perplexity. Breda moved around the table and laid her arm across her sister's shoulders.

‘Then what . . . ?' Molly began.

‘Oh Mammy, can't you guess?' Breda said. ‘'Tis Barry! 'Tis Barry, for sure.'

At the mention of his name Moira's sobs increased.

‘For heaven's sake!' James protested. ‘You're like a banshee wailing!'

‘Barry, is it?' Molly said. ‘Would you have quarrelled, then?' But when?

A lovers' tiff. She knew that could be painful, though she had not cast Barry Devlin, personable though he was, as her daughter's love, or at least as only one of them. True, they'd been in each other's pockets over the last fortnight, but Moira had had a dozen on a string since before she'd left school. She was skilled at playing them off one against the other, with little hurt to herself. To tell the truth, it was one of the traits she did not quite like in her daughter. But she didn't recall that she had ever seen her cry like this over any of the others.

‘So what is it about Barry?' she asked.

‘Has he not gone back to Dublin not an hour ago?' Moira said in a choked voice.

‘But we knew he was going back this morning. Didn't you spend last evening at the
céilidh
with him?'

And not get home till after one in the morning, Molly thought, and me lying awake listening out for you? And then hadn't she heard the long, murmured farewells (though not the words, only the voices) they'd made on the doorstep, which had gone on so long that James had wakened and shouted to Moira to come in at once. ‘At once, do you hear!' he'd thundered.

‘I went to see him off at the station . . . ' Moira began.

‘You left work to see him off?' Molly interrupted. ‘You left your customers?' she said with disbelief. ‘Whatever did Miss Glenda say to
that
?'

So there
had
been a row at the salon.

‘I don't know and I don't care!' Moira snapped. ‘I didn't go back. I don't care if I never go back again, and I'm certainly not going back today!'

‘Oh yes you are, Miss!' Molly said firmly. ‘I'll see to that if I have to drag you back!' Which would not be easy, since Moira was taller than she was and had the strength of youth.

‘I'm too upset!' Moira said. ‘Can't you see that?'

‘Sure I can see it, but I cannot understand it. What did he say to you, then?'

‘That's the size of it!' Moira cried. ‘He didn't say anything. Nothing that mattered. I was waiting for him to say it and he didn't. He
would
have said it last night, I
know
he would, if Dada hadn't shouted at me to come in. So I went to the station this morning to give him another chance, and he didn't say it!'

‘What was he going to say?' Breda asked eagerly, her eyes bright green with the excitement of it all. ‘Was he going to ask you to marry him, do you think? Oh, Moira!'

She was sure that was it, quite apart from the look on Moira's face. It was so romantic, like a film! And 'twas no surprise at all that Barry Devlin should want her sister, at least to her it wasn't. She had seen the way he looked at her, and he had given her a present of a blue glass pendant; and in any case, wasn't Moira the prettiest girl in all Kilbally? In the county, even?

Moira jumped to her feet and faced her father.

‘It's your fault!' she stormed. ‘I hate you! If it hadn't been for you shouting me in last night I'd have been engaged to be married now. I'd have had a beautiful wedding, and gone to live in Dublin. You've ruined my life, that's what you've done. You treat me like a child, calling me in like that. And I'm not a child!'

‘If I treat you like a child, it's because you act like one,' James stormed. ‘I'll not have a daughter of mine standing on the doorstep with a man at one o'clock in the morning! 'Tis not decent! What will the neighbours think?'

‘I don't care!' Moira shouted. ‘I don't care what anyone in Kilbally thinks. Bad cess to all of them, I say!'

She ran to the bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

So that was it! Dublin! 'Twas Dublin at the bottom of it. I'm sorry Kathleen, but I wish we'd never gone to Dublin, Molly thought. Except for seeing you, no good came of it.

There was a silence, then Breda stood up as if to go to her sister.

‘No, Breda,' Molly said. ‘Leave her be. She'll be best on her own for a while.'

James sighed. He hated scenes.

‘All the same,' he said, ‘if what she says is right, I'm wishing I hadn't called her in. It's time she was married. Knowing her nature, she's best married before anything worse happens.'

‘What worse could happen, Dada?' Breda asked.

Molly gave James a warning look.

‘Oh, I don't know, Breda,' he said. ‘I don't know what I meant by it. Nothing really!'

He means if she had a baby, Breda thought, which certainly would be awful.

In the bedroom, Moira lay face down on the bed, furiously beating the pillow with clenched fist. It was what she would have liked to have done to her father.

Now that they were the only two left at home, she and Breda had the luxury of a bed each, though at Moira's insistence they had kept the dividing curtain across. Moira liked her privacy. Breda was too inquisitive, too interested in everything, too chatty. Moira had insisted that her sister took the far side of the room so that if she herself chose to come in late there was no need for Breda to know.

What she had said to her father was the truth. He
had
ruined her life, and just when, at long last, it had taken a turn for the better, just when she'd seen all that she'd wanted within her grasp, only awaiting the few words which last night she was certain Barry had been about to utter.

She could tell. It wasn't difficult. Hadn't she had more than one proposal, and didn't she know the signs? The attention, the gifts, the invitations to meet the family (not that in Kilbally she didn't know most families anyway); and leading up to that the kisses, the mounting passion, the fumbling; the frustration when she'd allowed it so far and no further – for wasn't she a good Catholic girl, and didn't she know it was a fate worse than death if she got into trouble?

So, in spite of what people thought, which was that so far she'd been lucky rather than virtuous, she had actually never succumbed, though it had not been easy.

The truth was that, apart from bed, she had met no-one so far who could offer her what she wanted. Bed was only part of it. The last thing she desired was to live a life like her mother's, right here in Kilbally. Until Barry Devlin came on the scene that was more or less what she'd been offered.

She had known Barry in earlier times. They had been at the National School at the same time, but he was three years older and therefore took no notice of her. Then, as he was about to move on to the Christian Brothers, his father had been offered a job in Dublin and the family had moved, leaving behind only Mr Devlin's mother and an aunt or two.

It was Molly who had first noticed the reappearance of Barry. Serving the tea one day she said:

‘Who do you think I bumped into in Luke O'Reilly's this afternoon?'

Only Breda took her up. ‘Who, Mammy?'

‘Young Barry Devlin! You won't remember him, but Moira will. He was in the shop with his grandmother. He's come to pay her a summer visit.'

Moira hadn't bothered to look up – which just showed how wrong you could be – at least not until she'd heard her mother's next remark. ‘My word, there is no denying he has grown into a handsome young man! And smart too; every bit the Dublin boy.'

‘Why yes, I do remember him,' Moira said. ‘Did they not go to live in Dublin?'

‘And still live there,' Molly said. ‘And the whole family doing well, according to his grandmother.'

‘I suppose he will be married, then?' Moira enquired.

‘Not a bit of it! But a catch for some lucky girl,' Molly said. ‘I dare say there'll be one in Dublin.'

‘I dare say,' Moira said nonchalantly. ‘How long is he here for?'

‘Two weeks, I think.'

Not for one moment had Molly been deceived by Moira's indifference. She knew her too well for that. Barry Devlin would be another string to her daughter's bow. What she did not realize was the strength of the pull which Dublin still had over her.

Returning in the train after visiting Kathleen it had all seemed so easy, so certain, to Moira. She knew she would have to wait a little while, perhaps even a year, but she was confident that she would work it out. Without a doubt she would get there.

Three years had passed since then, and she was no nearer. She was more skilled in her job now and had her own customers, but she had never managed to save enough money to keep her in Dublin until she found work. Sometimes, when she was at a low ebb, she thought she might just leave home, turn up on the doorstep of Our Lady of Lourdes. Would they help her? She rather thought not. More than likely they would send her back home on the next train. She became more and more afraid that one day soon she would find herself obliged to marry a Kilbally boy, and that was a future which filled her with despair.

But with her mother's words hope sprang afresh in her. Barry Devlin probably had a girl in Dublin – what could be more likely? – but he wasn't in Dublin now, he was right here in Kilbally, and would be for two whole weeks!

The first thing she did, next morning, was to tell Miss Glenda that she wanted to take the week's holiday which was due to her. She wanted to take it at once; she hadn't been feeling well for some time and she needed a change.

‘But that's highly inconvenient!' Miss Glenda protested. ‘You have appointments, bookings. What am I to tell them?'

‘I'm sorry,' Moira said wanly. ‘I just don't feel up to it.'

‘I don't know how you can afford to take a holiday,' Miss Glenda said. ‘I know I never can.'

Moira was aware that she wouldn't get paid. She would just have to manage without it and so would her mother. And for a second week if necessary, for if things went well she had no intention of going back to work while Barry Devlin was in the neighbourhood.

Everything did go well, from the moment she knocked on Grandma Devlin's door, saying she was just out for a nice walk and hadn't a nail sprung up suddenly in her shoe so that it was crippling her, and could she borrow a hammer and she'd knock it down, so? And – surprise, surprise – wasn't Barry himself in the house and not knowing what to do with himself because everyone was at work, and Moira would be doing them all a favour, his grandmother said, if, when he had knocked the nail down, Moira would take him with her on her long walk.

He found it difficult to locate the nail, but whatever he had done with the hammer, Moira said, he had worked the magic. Her shoe had never felt so comfortable.

Have I done the right thing, Nora Devlin wondered, watching them set off. Didn't everyone know that Moira O'Connor was a fast piece, in spite of the fact that her mother was the nicest woman you could meet in a day's march? But there were no flies on Barry, she comforted herself. He was a city man, wasn't he, a match for any country girl, even Moira O'Connor.

Moira had never walked so much as in that first week, which then, as she had expected, extended to a fortnight.

‘You could lose your job!' her mother protested.

I shan't need it, Moira thought.