Amongst Women (7 page)

‘You gave us all a start,’ Rose said happily. ‘For a few minutes our hearts were in our mouths. We thought you weren’t coming but it’s wonderful you got here.’

‘I got this puncture. She just went flat,’ he turned his grease- stained hands upwards again on the wheel as he drove.

‘You’ll have hot water for them as soon as we get to the house.’

‘You must have left it very tight to get here so late,’ Moran said.

‘You never think you’ll get anything.’

‘Of course nobody ever thinks. That goes without saying.’

‘Everything is fine now. Their uncle got here and that is all that matters,’ Rose smoothed, turning to chat to the girls in the back.

The car was too large for the lane so they walked in. The April Saturday was mild, with just the faintest threat of showers. Everywhere in the low briers and hedgerows was the clatter and singing of small birds. The little lake below the house was still ringed with its winter reeds, the colour of rained-on wheat. Everybody waited to eat until the priest arrived. He was the only one to risk his small car on the lane. He would have to leave early on a sick call, he said.

There were no letters or telegrams to be read out. The priest, with folded hands and closed eyes, recited Grace, and the meal began: soup served by a daughter of the same sister of Rose’s who had been taking the photos; chicken and ham, with salad. The wedding cake was cut. The priest made a short speech praising the families and the outstanding simplicity of the wedding feast. There was too much emphasis nowadays on show, on Rolls-Royces and big hotels, wasteful, expensive display. It was pleasant to see people returning to the old ways, he said. There was wine and whiskey and beer for the toast. The best man said he wasn’t used to speeches, he nearly hadn’t arrived at all himself, but he just wanted to thank Father here for all he had done and the people of the bride here for this feast and all the trouble they had gone to, and then he proposed the toast. The brother who had given Rose away responded even more briefly and soon afterwards the priest left.

Gradually the wedding breakfast was breaking up. One of Rose’s tall silent brothers went around the tables with a bottle of wine and a bottle of whiskey but they drank sparingly. When the best man cleared his throat and announced that he was going to fix the puncture he had before leaving, all Moran’s children followed him out to the road and stood around as he got levers and patches and solution. When he came back to the house he refused to take a chair or a drink.

‘I better be making a start. I have a run to do yet this evening.’

‘We might as well go with you so,’ Moran said and Rose got up eagerly. She had all her going-away things packed. The remaining things she could come back for any day. Her mother and sisters and brothers all embraced her but she showed no emotion. The whole household walked them out to the big Ford at the end of the lane. They embraced Rose a second time and everybody shook hands. At the bridge Moran and Rose changed to their own small blue car and the uncle drove the children home. He waited at the house until the bride and groom arrived but he could not be persuaded to enter the house.

The whole of Rose’s family walked back down the lane to their house in silence. ‘She had many admirers,’ the old mother said as they neared the house in a tone of puzzlement and of mourning. ‘Many admirers … Many admirers …’

‘Nothing could stop her. She was determined on it. Now it’s her life,’ her married sister said gently.

‘I hope she’ll be lucky,’ the wife of one of the brothers said without any feeling.

The four tall brothers walked in stooped silence but their wives chatted agreeably. A daughter held the mother’s hand in sympathy.

When they entered the house one of the brothers reached for the bottle of whiskey and poured four large glasses for the first time that day. They were a very close family but in the years to come no gathering or wedding, not even simple gatherings, was ever held in any one of their houses. They went to big hotels as if determined never again to experience anything like this house wedding in all their mortal lives. Neither Rose nor Moran ever attended any of the gatherings. They were never invited. They would not have gone if they were.

‘I don’t know about anybody else but I’d love a nice hot cup of tea,’ Rose said as soon as they were all in the house. At once she set a tone that would not be easily wrested from her. Moran watched in silence.

All the girls helped her to get the fire going, spread the tablecloth, put out the cups and plates, laughing and whispering and bustling about as they showed her the places and secrets of the kitchen, the room that was now her room. There was a touch of hysteria in the frantic busyness. Their exaggeration of the small tasks betrayed that they were more involved with Moran than in what they were doing. Sometimes they would accidentally bring it to crisis by letting a plate or cup smash on the floor. As they showed her the house, Rose seemed to enter completely into the terrible awareness of Moran now sitting in the car chair meditatively rotating his thumbs about one another. On this his wedding day he seemed strangely  at peace. It was as if he needed this quality of attention to be fixed upon him in order to be completely silent.

During the entire day he felt a violent, dissatisfied feeling that his whole life was taking place in front of his eyes without anything at all taking place. Distances were walked. Words were said. Rings were exchanged. The party moved from church to house. All seemed a kind of mockery. It was as if nothing at all had happened. He was tired of wrestling with it, brooding about it, sometimes looking at his bride’s back with violent puzzlement; but now, surrounded by this covert attention, he was glad to let it go: he would take tea like a lord with his family.

Was there milk enough or a little too much in his tea? They could add more tea once he had taken a few sips. He didn’t take sugar any more. Would he have the plain bread or the bread with the blackcurrant jam or a piece of the apple tart? ‘The tea was all right,’ he protested and they knew he was far from displeased. ‘It’ll do for the man it is for. I’ve already eaten enough today to do a man for a week. I’d explode if I was to put as much as one morsel more in my mouth.’

Rose and the girls smiled as the tea and the plates circled around him. They were already conspirators. They were mastered and yet they were controlling together what they were mastered by.

‘Thanks,’ he put his cup away. ‘I’ll go out to the fields for a few hours to try to work off some of this.’

He changed into his old clothes and left. They washed and dried the cups and plates and put them away. A quiet that was close to let-down replaced the wild bustle of the preparation but they were enjoying each other’s company, the animal comfort of other presences, banishment of loneliness.

Outside, Moran thinned several small ash trees from the hedge that ran along the foot of the orchard. He liked mechanical things and he was pleased that the chainsaw he had had to dismantle several times in the past seemed to run perfectly. ‘It must have been the timing that was out all along.’ The felling, trimming, cutting, absorbed him completely and because of the ferocity of the running chain it demanded his undivided attention. Michael followed him out and helped pile the waste branches into heaps for burning and then they stacked the scattered lengths of the firewood.

Inside, the girls showed Rose all over the house. After that she began to tell them a little about her life in Scotland, particularly her life with the Rosenblooms.

‘Sometimes at the weekend Mr Rosenbloom would come and ask me to iron his shirts. He had hundreds of shirts and why he ever wanted
me
to iron them I’ll never know. Mrs Rosenbloom nearly always found out about it and she would be mad that he had taken me from my work with the children. There’d be a battle royal all morning. After lunch he’d go into the city and come back with a whole armful of roses, the price of many shirts.’

‘Would she be satisfied with that?’ the girls demanded greedily.

‘She’d hold out for a while but it would always be made up after he came back with the roses. He’d swear of course that he’d never again steal me from my proper duties with the children. She’d cut and arrange the roses. They’d dress up then and go out to dinner to some restaurant, laughing and talking together as if nothing at all had happened.’

‘What would they be talking about, Rose?’

‘About what they’d eat that evening in the restaurant and what wines they’d drink. You would wonder how they could eat at all after the amount of time they spent talking about food.’

When Moran came in from the field with Michael he was in high good humour.

‘This man and me are after slaughtering a few trees out there.’

Even the way he hung his hat was expansive, drawing the whole room in. The girls knew how soon this mood could change if it was not fully entered into.

‘I’m fit to tackle a live child again,’ he joked as they prepared to eat.

‘Now Michael, that’s hardly necessary,’ Rose scolded gently.

‘It might not be but it’s the godalmighty truth,’ he asserted so playfully back that the whole table laughed.

After the tea he suggested that they play cards, already shuffling  the cards he took from the sill. They played Twenty-one; the scores were kept on the inside of a Lyons Green Label tea packet. Moran was the best player and mostly won but that night he attributed his winnings to the cards he had been dealt. They knelt to the Rosary. Moran began, ‘Thou, O Lord, wilt open my lips,’ as he began every evening. There was a pause when he ended the First Mystery. All their eyes were turned on Rose but she, with just a glance at Moran, took up the Second Mystery as if she had been saying it with them all the nights of their lives.

After the prayers they went up in turn and kissed Moran and then Rose who returned their kisses warmly, and they slipped away to their rooms. The boy was going to the boxroom and was clearly excited at possessing a room of his own for the first time. He too kissed Rose. Rose and Moran sat on alone in the room. They were not silent but only spoke after long intervals and what they said did not carry to the upstairs rooms. When the couple did go to their bedroom the girls became even more wide awake than before. They tried not to breathe as they listened. They were too nervous and frightened of life to react to or put into words the sounds they heard from the room where their father was sleeping with Rose.

Rose was up at seven the next morning, an hour before the house usually stirred. When the girls came down they found the room already warm, the fire lit, the kettle steaming. Rose was preparing to bring Moran a mug of tea.

‘Daddy wouldn’t hear of having his breakfast in bed,’ she said with a small engaging laugh. ‘But he might as well have this before getting up.’

She made an enormous difference in the house. Since their mother’s death it had been run by Maggie, with bits of help from Mona and Sheila. At first their mother’s sister had come from time to time but she and Moran had quarrelled. He was not interested in food other than it should not cost too much and wasn’t raw. The girls had never been taught to cook or housekeep. They could cook vegetables and meat simply, deal with eggs and bacon and porridge, and they were able to bake and housekeep, learning as they went along. They didn’t need to know much more.

Rose changed everything. She was able to organize her day so that even though she seemed to be less harassed than Maggie the meals were always delicious and on time. Then she began to clean and paint the house room by room. Moran complained about the unnecessary disturbance though it was the cost that he was secretly worried by. She pointed out that the plaster would soon fall away without paint. Whenever he complained too much about cost she went and bought what she needed with her own money. That he disliked even more. In the end he always gave what she asked but he resented the giving. She did not seem to mind and she was inordinately careful. ‘You know Daddy.’ she would laugh defensively with the girls. All the children helped her redecorate the house. When it was done the whole house had acquired a new pleasantness and comfort. Even Moran had to admit it though he dismissed it as well by saying that it would have done well enough for the likes of him as it had been.

What was also clear was that the house’s need of Maggie had disappeared. Rose brought this up very gently to Moran.

‘She’ll have a roof over her head as long as I’m above ground,’ he responded aggressively.

‘She’ll have that as long as I’m here too but I think she should have more.’

‘What more does she want?’

‘She’s almost nineteen. The day is gone when a girl waits around till some man needs a wife. She should have the protection of some work.’

‘What job of any good would she get here? She left school at fourteen. She wasn’t all that good at school either.’

‘There’s a shortage of nurses in England. I always regretted I never trained. I’ve spoken to her and she’s interested.’

‘You were very quick off the mark, weren’t you? A lot of our people go wrong in England.’

‘I was there for a while,’ she said pointedly but she was careful not to press too much. She had heard already from the girls how Luke had tried to get Maggie to go to England to learn nursing against Moran’s fierce opposition, how their older brother and Moran had fought, and when Maggie yielded to Moran and stayed, Luke had gone on his own without telling his father.

She waited until Moran himself had to come to talk about Maggie. Sheila and Mona were at the convent secondary school, Michael was finishing national school. Maggie had so little to do during the day that she spent much of the time chatting and gossiping with Rose. She would pretend to be busy whenever she heard Moran come. ‘Daddy hates to see anybody sitting down doing nothing.’ ‘Poor Daddy,’ Rose would smile with affection after he had gone again.

Moran began to see how little Maggie had to do in the house and that she needed money for dances and clothes now. He suspected Rose was letting her have some of her own money.