The Disenchanted Widow (14 page)

Lorcan, sitting across from her in a club chair, a cup of fine Earl Grey tea to hand, was miles away. He’d just driven down from Belfast that morning and was tired. It had been a trying couple of days, extricating himself from his workplace and the clutches of his landlady. He couldn’t decide which had been more fraught.

“Oh, Lorcan,” Mrs. Hipple had said, face all frowny concern. “I’ll ’ave to let out your room then, I will. You didn’t give me any notice, you didn’t, and I ’ave tae keep the rent comin’ in, any road you look at it.”

“I
will
be coming back, Mavis. I’m not leaving for good—only a month.”

“That’s as may be, Lorcan, but I’ve still got the heatin’ and electric, I ’ave.”

He soon realized that the only way to hold on to the room and get rid of Mavis was to wave some money in her face.

Unfortunately, at that point, Miss Finch had come down the stairs in a churchgoer’s hat, bulky prayer book pressed to her bosom. Mavis, being Mavis, could not but draw her into the contretemps.

“Our Lorcan’s leavin’ us for a month, he is, Miss Finch.”

“Oh dear,” Miss Finch had said, her lovelorn eyes on Lorcan. “I hope there’s nothing wrong, Mr. Strong?”

“Mother’s a bit poorly—but it’s nothing serious.”

“Oh…I’ll offer up a prayer for her at the service.”

“Very kind of you, Miss Finch. Well, I won’t detain you ladies further.”

He thought now, as his mother rambled on, that at least Miss Finch would have the bathroom facilities to herself. Another benefit of having left Belfast was that there’d be no more visits to the ghastly house in Nansen Street. He planned on having the painting ready for the dreaded Dentist as soon as possible. That was the only way to get shut of him.

“I say, Lorcan?”

“Sorry…who—what, Mother?”

“Why, the surgeon, of course! ‘I can cauterize those, Mrs. Strong,’ he said, as if it were the simplest thing in the world. ‘You won’t feel a thing.’”

“It’s your own fault, Mother. Didn’t he tell you to stay off your feet as much as possible? But no, you had to go into the pub.”

“Well, of
course
I had to go in, son. I’d nobody else to take care of things except Gusty. It’s not that I’m ungrateful, for he’s better
than having nobody. And he’s a good head for figures—not like your poor father when the derangement took hold of him, God rest his soul.”

Lorcan could recall his father’s unfortunate lapses all too well and wished his mother wouldn’t keep alluding to them. Arthur Strong would be fondly remembered in Tailorstown for his inadvertent largesse during the summer of 1975 when, befuddled by medication and with senility taking hold, he gave away not only drink but money as well. The Crowing Cock’s sudden popularity, especially on Saturday nights, was a mystery to other publicans in the area, who found themselves drumming fingers on idle bar counters while their booked-and-paid-for bands blared out the country hits of the day into empty rooms.

“You know, I only found out about how bad he was from Rose McFadden,” Etta continued. “Hadn’t a clue until Rose told me that her Paddy always came home drunker than usual and with more money in his pockets whenever your poor father was serving. The scandal of it, Lorcan! Oh, and just when I mention Rose, she asked if you’d touch up the Blessed Mother for Father Cassidy. I said of course you would. It’s over there on the dresser.”

Lorcan looked to the dresser and saw an odd collection of damaged artifacts. Incongruously, in among it sat a large, faded head of the Virgin Mary.

“That’s not a problem, Mother. But where’s the rest of her?”

“Now, Rose just brought her head to me yesterday, God bless her. The rest of her is coming today. It’s a rather heavy object, you see, and poor Rose dropped it when taking it down off the plinth. She was so vexed—as you can imagine. She plans to do penance for it on Lough Derg with Paddy.”

“Why does poor Paddy have to do penance as well?”

“Oh, you know how seriously Rose takes her faith.”

He smiled. No matter how long he stayed away, he’d still be called upon to revive the religious objets d’art belonging to the locals. “Don’t fret; I’ll do what I can to reassemble the Virgin. And don’t worry about Gusty, either. I’ll keep an eye on him. He’s a good head for figures, as you say, and he’s honest. You don’t give him enough credit.”

Serving in the family bar was a specter that had haunted Lorcan from his teens, when he’d been coerced by his domineering father into lending a hand. More like two hands, two arms, and a boot on occasion. Many a legless and near-insensate patron he’d had to steer off the premises with pleas and cajoling, bundling them into waiting taxicabs while they protested like subarctic seals howling at the moon. And now, with his father in his grave and his mother in a pair of reinforced surgical stockings, the specter was looming again.

“Oh, I
do
give him credit. It’s not that. Gusty’s got odd ways, with that unhealthy interest of his in outlandish facts. All those strange things to do with nature. He took up a good half hour of my time yesterday, filling me in on the mating habits of African dwarfs and how they can eat frogs through their eyeballs or some such nonsense. I didn’t know where to look. Such stories might scare people off.”

Lorcan grinned. “Well, it’s good to hear he has an interest outside the normal range of topics in these parts. There are more interesting things in life than speculating on the weather and cattle prices. And by the way, I think he might have been telling you about the African dwarf
frog
, which ingests its prey through its eyeballs.”

“There’s no need to mock, Lorcan Strong!” she shot back. “That’s what comes of being a bachelor. A man gets set in his ways, becomes bitter and sarcastic.”

“I’m not bitter, Mother.” He knew what was coming next.

“You need to get yourself a wife, dear. You need a good woman to take care of you. I want to see you happy, son.”

Mrs. Strong was as subtle as a sledgehammer when it came to her son’s lack of a spouse. But Lorcan, expecting at least a couple of swipes in every conversation, was well able to duck and dive. His strategy was a simple one: he ignored her well-meant hints completely.

“How long will it be before you’re all healed up?” he asked now. “You and the good folk of Tailorstown have the pleasure of my company for a month.” Then he added, “But only the month, mind.” In Lorcan’s experience, Etta tended to malinger when he was around. It was her way of making him feel guilty for his prolonged absences from home.

He leaned across and placed his cup on the coffee table with the last remark, believing a physical gesture was necessary to soften what might be construed as harsh. He hoped also to get her off the subject of his private life. But the diversion was lost on Etta as she reached for the sledgehammer once more.

“You know, Nuala Crink—Doris’s cousin—always asks about you, Lorcan. Now there’s a very solid, hardworking girl. Can turn her hand to anything. Works in Mr. Harvey’s underwear department, and if you ask me, she’s lost there. She’d be very good behind the bar…very reliable, being used to customers.”

He wondered how selling underwear to the good ladies of Tailorstown somehow qualified Nuala Crink to pull pints while exchanging bawdy banter with the patrons of the Crowing Cock. Wisely, he decided to keep these musings to himself.

A vision of Miss Crink sprang up at him out of the past: a dolorous, skinny girl—Veronese’s Saint Helena—with a wan face and downcast eyes. “Hmm-hmm.”

“I told her you were coming home,” continued Etta, “and she said she was looking forward to seeing you. You should look in on
her in the shop. Such an attentive girl. Keeps me well supplied with my Day-Long compression supports.”

A fret of panic ran through Lorcan. He’d evaded the attentions of Miss Finch in Belfast only to be confronted by her doppelgänger in Tailorstown. He’d all but forgotten Nuala Crink. They’d journeyed through primary school in the same class. She’d been his comrade in battle, bullied in tandem—he for being too bright, and Nuala for being too skinny.

“I’ve taken work home with me, Mother, and—what with tending to you and keeping an eye on Gusty—I doubt I’ll have the time for much socializing. Speaking of work, I must prepare my studio.” He got up.

“It would do no harm to say hello to poor Nuala.”

Lorcan took a deep breath. “Mother, I have no interest in Nuala Crink. None whatsoever.” It was time to be forthright, or before he knew it, he could find himself exchanging wedding vows with the shop assistant at the altar rails and wondering how on earth he’d got there. “Neither do I have anything in common with her. I paint pictures; she sells underwear. I would be very disappointed if I thought you were putting ideas into Nuala’s head. Very disappointed indeed.”

He saw that she was gazing at a photograph of his father, which sat prominently on the mantelshelf. He knew that beatific look and sensed what was coming. “I do wish your poor father were still here. He could talk to anyone.”

“Things change, Mother…sadly. Now, I’ll check out my studio,” he said as cheerfully as he could, “and unpack my things. And tomorrow I’ll have a word with Gusty about his rota and see what’s what.” Etta was still staring at the photo of her late husband. He saw her eyes well up. He went to her and patted her shoulder reassuringly. “Don’t worry. I’m here now, and I’ll take care of things. Can I get you anything?”

“Thanks, Lorcan dear; you always were a good boy. No, I’ll just have a read at the paper and then a little nap. You go on ahead and get yourself sorted.”

His studio, not much of a room where space was concerned, had the advantage of two windows: one facing out onto the street, the other overlooking the backyard. It had been a struggle to get the studio. But that was a long time ago now, when he was at school. He was sixteen at the time.

“A
what
?” his father had asked irritably.

“A studio,” Etta had repeated. “Lorcan needs a wee room for himself so he can paint his bits and pieces.”

“Hasn’t he got his bedroom? What’s wrong with that?”

“He needs light, dear. All artists need light.”

“Light! What’ll it be next? I’m tellin ye, if ye don’t stop mollycoddling him he’ll turn into a nancy boy, and it’ll be
your
fault.”

Lorcan smiled at the memory. That had been his father’s primary worry. He was from an era when men were men, and the field and pub were where you proved yourself. The creative urge was anathema to him, and therefore something suspect.

But Etta had won, as she generally did. Lorcan got his studio, and the people of Tailorstown got an artist on permanent call. One who could gild their chipped frames in gaudy gold, who could copy their photographs, touch up statues with putty and paint, even do a bit of signwriting for a tradesman when required.

The young Lorcan didn’t mind. It earned him the pocket money he never got from his father, and it paid for the tubes of paint and canvases he needed for his real artistic endeavors.

Now he cast a glance at some of those early works, still hanging where he’d affixed them to the walls all those years ago. Crude though they seemed now to his sophisticated eye, he was still proud of the sheer enthusiasm displayed there.

He painted nature. The intricacies the untrained eye passed over, the things that went unnoticed amid the clamor and hurly-burly of everyday life. The sun glancing off a gannet’s wing, a roil of cumulus preceding a thunderstorm, a sloughed-off chrysalis in the morning dew. The fleeting moment arrested.

The room was just the way he’d left it last time. His desks, swivel chair, canvases stacked against the back wall. There was a painting of the Slievegerrin Mountains in progress on the easel. It had been commissioned by the local bank. He’d hoped to finish it on this occasion, but for obvious reasons it would have to wait.

His artist’s case sat on the desk. He opened it, drew out some fresh tubes of paint, and arranged them neatly by his palette. He replenished the jars of thinners and linseed oil and unwrapped a set of new brushes. Brushes were of the utmost importance. He treated his riggers and filberts, the rounds and mop-heads, with the utmost care. They were expensive, and he needed to get the most out of them. Besides, a portrait with the majesty and detail of the Countess demanded the best.

The mere thought of the portrait made him uneasy now. The Dentist’s ugly face rushed at him. He heard the screams of a manacled man in a surgical chair. He cast a glance at the wrapped canvas and couldn’t bring himself to unwrap it just yet. Its unveiling would befoul the innocence of his little room. His creative niche. How could such an exceptional work of art come to represent something vile and reprehensible? The thought depressed him; he sighed and gazed out the window.

At that slack hour of a Sunday afternoon there was little to inspire him. Nothing stirred, save for a gathering of crows pecking at something in the gutter. Farther along, a car—a veteran Austin A40—sat puttering outside Plunket O’Brien’s newsagents, its trembling tailpipe sending out little puffs of blue smoke.

As Lorcan watched, Master O’Hanlon, his old art teacher, emerged corpulently from the shop carrying a folded newspaper under one arm and what looked like a pack of Mr. Kipling Cherry Bakewells. With great ceremony he stowed both items in the boot of the parked vehicle. Retirement had made him fat. His plaid sport jacket and gray slacks looked way too small, giving the impression that having dressed that morning, he had hooked himself up to a compressed-air pump and inflated his body to twice its usual size.

The schoolmaster squeezed himself with obvious strain into the driver’s seat; checked right, left, and right again as if he were on the busiest thoroughfare of a bustling metropolis; and then crept slowly out onto the street. He tootled off, his pudgy hands gripping the steering wheel with a Samsonesque zeal, his round face close to the windshield, shiny with hope and carbolic soap.

Lorcan found himself wondering how the master might fill his Sunday afternoons, and an image lumbered into his psyche. A very unwelcome image of the portly bachelor slumped in an armchair by the fire, crumbs dusting his front and the floor beneath him. He’d be reading the
Sunday Press
, a mug of tea and the sole survivor from the pack of Cherry Bakewells on a chipped plate at his elbow. Did a similar fate await Lorcan when his mother passed on?