The Love Object (11 page)

O’Toole asked if any of the ladies would care to sing. There were five ladies in all – Mrs Rodgers, Mary, Doris, Eithne, and Crystal the local hairdresser, who had a new red rinse in her hair and who insisted that the food was a little heavy for her. The goose was greasy and undercooked, she did not like its raw, pink colour. She liked dainty things, little bits of cold chicken breast with sweet pickles. Her real name was Carmel, but when she started up as a hairdresser she changed to Crystal and dyed her brown hair red.

‘I bet you can sing,’ O’Toole said to Mary.

‘Where she comes from they can hardly talk,’ Doris said.

Mary felt the blood rushing to her sallow cheeks. She would not tell them, but her father’s name had been in the paper once, because he had seen a pine-marten in the forestry plantation; and they ate with a knife and fork at home and had oil cloth on the kitchen table, and kept a tin of coffee in case strangers called.

She would not tell them anything. She just hung her head, making clear that she was not about to sing.

In honour of the Bishop, O’Toole put ‘Far away in Australia’ on the horn gramophone. Mrs Rodgers had asked for it. The sound issued forth with rasps and scratchings and Brogan said he could do better than that himself.

‘Christ, lads, we forgot the soup!’ Mrs Rodgers said suddenly, as she threw down the fork and went towards the door. There had been soup scheduled to begin with.

‘I’ll help you,’ Doris O’Beirne said, stirring herself for the first time that night, and they both went down to get the pot of dark giblet soup which had been simmering all that day.

‘Now we need two pounds from each of the gents,’ said O’Toole, taking the opportunity while Mrs Rodgers was away to mention the delicate matter of money. The men had agreed to pay two pounds each, to cover the cost of the drink; the ladies did not have to pay anything, but were invited so as to lend a pleasant and decorative atmosphere to the party, and, of course, to help.

O’Toole went around with his cap held out, and Brogan said that as it was
his
party he ought to give a fiver.

‘I ought to give a fiver, but I suppose ye wouldn’t hear of that,’ Brogan said, and handed up two pound notes. Hickey paid up, too, and O’Toole himself and Long John Salmon – who was silent up to then. O’Toole gave it to Mrs Rodgers when she returned and told her to clock it up against the damages.

‘Sure that’s too kind altogether,’ she said, as she put it behind the stuffed owl on the mantelpiece, under the Bishop’s watchful eye.

She served the soup in cups and Mary was asked to pass the cups around. The grease floated like drops of molten gold on the surface of each cup.

‘See you later, alligator,’ Hickey said, as she gave him his; then he asked her for a piece of bread because he wasn’t used to soup without bread.

‘Tell us, Brogan,’ said Hickey to his rich friend, ‘what’ll you do, now that you’re a rich man?’

‘Oh go on, tell us,’ said Doris O’Beirne.

‘Well,’ said Brogan, thinking for a minute, ‘we’re going to make some changes at home.’ None of them had ever visited Brogan’s home because it was situated in Adare, thirty miles away, at the far side of Limerick. None of them had ever seen his wife either, who it seems lived there and kept bees.

‘What sort of changes?’ someone said.

‘We’re going to do up the drawing-room, and we’re going to have flower-beds,’ Brogan told them.

‘And what else?’ Crystal asked, thinking of all the lovely clothes she could buy with that money, clothes and jewellery.

‘Well,’ said Brogan, thinking again, ‘we might even go to Lourdes. I’m not sure yet, it all depends.’

‘I’d give my two eyes to go to Lourdes,’ Mrs Rodgers said.

‘And you’d get ’em back when you arrived there,’ Hickey said, but no one paid any attention to him.

O’Toole poured out four half-tumblers of whiskey and then stood back to examine the glasses to see that each one had the same amount. There was always great anxiety among the men, about being fair with drink. Then O’Toole stood bottles of stout in little groups of six and told each man which group was his. The ladies had gin and orange.

‘Orange for me,’ Mary said, but O’Toole told her not to be such a goody, and when her back was turned he put gin in her orange.

They drank a toast to Brogan.

‘To Lourdes,’ Mrs Rodgers said.

‘To Brogan,’ O’Toole said.

‘To myself,’ Hickey said.

‘Mud in your eye,’ said Doris O’Beirne, who was already unsteady from tippling cider.

‘Well we’re not sure about Lourdes,’ Brogan said. ‘But we’ll get the drawing-room done up anyhow, and the flower-beds put in.’

‘We’ve a drawing-room here,’ Mrs Rodgers said, ‘and no one ever sets foot in it.’

‘Come into the drawing-room, Doris,’ said O’Toole to Mary, who was serving the jelly from the big enamel basin. They’d had no china bowl to put it in. It was red jelly with whipped egg-white in it, but something went wrong because it hadn’t set properly. She served it in saucers, and thought to herself what a rough-and-ready party it was. There wasn’t a proper cloth on the table either, just a plastic one, and no napkins, and that big basin with the jelly in it. Maybe people washed in that basin, downstairs.

‘Well someone tell us a bloomin’ joke,’ said Hickey, who was getting fed up with talk about drawing-rooms and flower-beds.

‘I’ll tell you a joke,’ said Long John Salmon, erupting out of his silence.

‘Good,’ said Brogan, as he sipped from his whiskey glass and his stout glass alternately. It was the only way to drink enjoyably. That was why, in pubs, he’d be much happier if he could buy his own drink and not rely on anyone else’s meanness.

‘Is it a funny joke?’ Hickey asked of Long John Salmon.

‘It’s about my brother,’ said Long John Salmon, ‘my brother Patrick.’

‘Oh no, don’t tell us that old rambling thing again,’ said Hickey and O’Toole, together.

‘Oh let him tell it,’ said Mrs Rodgers who’d never heard the story anyhow.

Long John Salmon began, ‘I had this brother Patrick and he died; the heart wasn’t too good.’

‘Holy Christ, not this again,’ said Brogan, recollecting which story it was.

But Long John Salmon went on, undeterred by the abuse from the three men:

‘One day I was standing in the shed, about a month after he was buried, and I saw him coming out of the wall, walking across the yard.’

‘Oh what would you do if you saw a thing like that,’ Doris said to Eithne.

‘Let him tell it,’ Mrs Rodgers said. ‘Go on, Long John.’

‘Well it was walking toward me, and I said to myself, “What do I do now?”; ’twas raining heavy, so I said to say brother Patrick, “Stand in out of the wet or you’ll get drenched.” ’

‘And then?’ said one of the girls anxiously.

‘He vanished,’ said Long John Salmon.

‘Ah God, let us have a bit of music,’ said Hickey, who had heard that story nine or ten times. It had neither a beginning, a middle nor an end. They put a record on, and O’Toole asked Mary to dance. He did a lot of fancy steps and capering; and now and then he let out a mad ‘Yippee’. Brogan and Mrs Rodgers were dancing too and Crystal said that she’d dance if anyone asked her.

‘Come on, knees up Mother Brown,’ O’Toole said to Mary, as he jumped around the room, kicking the legs of chairs as he moved. She felt funny: her head was swaying round and round, and in the pit of her stomach there was a nice, ticklish feeling that made her want to lie back and stretch her legs. A new feeling that frightened her.

‘Come into the drawing-room, Doris,’ he said, dancing her right out of the room and into the cold passage where he kissed her clumsily.

Inside Crystal O’Meara had begun to cry. That was how drink affected her; either she cried or talked in a foreign accent and said, ‘Why am I talking in a foreign accent?’

This time she cried.

‘Hickey, there is no joy in life,’ she said as she sat at the table with her head laid in her arms and her blouse slipping up out of her skirtband.

‘What joy?’ said Hickey, who had all the drink he needed, and a pound note which he slipped from behind the owl when no one was looking.

Doris and Eithne sat on either side of Long John Salmon, asking if they could go out next year when the sugar plums were ripe. Long John Salmon lived by himself, way up the country, and he had a big orchard. He was odd and silent in himself; he took a swim every day, winter and summer, in the river, at the back of his house.

‘Two old married people,’ Brogan said, as he put his arm round Mrs Rodgers and urged her to sit down because he was out of breath from dancing. He said he’d go away with happy memories of them all, and sitting down he drew her on to his lap. She was a heavy woman, with straggly brown hair that had once been a nut colour.

‘There is no joy in life,’ Crystal sobbed, as the gramophone made crackling noises and Mary ran in from the landing, away from O’Toole.

‘I mean business,’ O’Toole said, and winked.

O’Toole was the first to get quarrelsome.

‘Now ladies, now gentlemen, a little laughing sketch, are we ready?’ he asked.

‘Fire ahead,’ Hickey told him.

‘Well, there was these three lads, Paddy th’Irishman, Paddy th’Englishman, and Paddy the Scotsman, and they were badly in need of a …’

‘Now, no smut,’ Mrs Rodgers snapped, before he had uttered a wrong word at all.

‘What smut?’ said O’Toole, getting offended.’ Smut!’ And he asked her to explain an accusation like that.

‘Think of the girls,’ Mrs Rodgers said.

‘Girls,’ O’Toole sneered, as he picked up the bottle of cream – which they’d forgotten to use with the jelly – and poured it into the carcass of the ravaged goose.

‘Christ’s sake, man,’ Hickey said, taking the bottle of cream out of O’Toole’s hand.

Mrs Rodgers said that it was high time everyone went to bed, as the party seemed to be over.

The guests would spend the night in the Commercial. It was too late for them to go home anyhow, and also Mrs Rodgers did not want them to be observed staggering out of the house at that hour. The police watched her like hawks and she didn’t want any trouble, until Christmas was over at least. The sleeping arrangements had been decided earlier on – there were three bedrooms vacant. One was Brogan’s, the room he always slept in. The other three men were to pitch in together in the second big bedroom, and the girls were to share the back room with Mrs Rodgers herself.

‘Come on, everyone, blanket street,’ Mrs Rodgers said, as she put a guard in front of the dying fire and took the money from behind the owl.

‘Sugar you,’ O’Toole said, pouring stout now into the carcass of the goose, and Long John Salmon wished that he had never come. He thought of daylight and of his swim in the mountain river at the back of his grey, stone house.

‘Ablution,’ he said, aloud, taking pleasure in the word and in thought of the cold water touching him. He could do without people, people were waste. He remembered catkins on a tree outside his window, catkins in February as white as snow; who needed people?

‘Crystal, stir yourself,’ Hickey said, as he put on her shoes and patted the calves of her legs.

Brogan kissed the four girls and saw them across the landing to the bedroom. Mary was glad to escape without O’Toole noticing; he was very obstreperous and Hickey was trying to control him.

In the bedroom she sighed; she had forgotten all about the furniture being pitched in there. Wearily they began to unload the things. The room was so crammed that they could hardly move in it. Mary suddenly felt alert and frightened, because O’Toole could be heard yelling and singing out on the landing. There had been gin in her orangeade, she knew now, because she breathed closely on to the palm of her hand and smelt her own breath. She had broken her Confirmation pledge, broken her promise; it would bring her bad luck.

Mrs Rodgers came in and said that five of them would be too crushed in the bed, so that she herself would sleep on the sofa for one night.

‘Two of you at the top and two at the bottom,’ she said, as she warned them not to break any of the ornaments, and not to stay talking all night.

‘Night and God bless,’ she said, as she shut the door behind her.

‘Nice thing,’ said Doris O’Beirne, ‘bunging us all in here; I wonder where she’s off to?’

‘Will you loan me curlers?’ Crystal asked. To Crystal, hair was the most important thing on earth. She would never get married because you couldn’t wear curlers in bed then. Eithne Duggan said she wouldn’t put curlers in now if she got five million for doing it, she was that jaded. She threw herself down on the quilt and spread her arms out. She was a noisy, sweaty girl but Mary liked her better than the other two.

‘Ah me old segotums,’ O’Toole said, pushing their door in. The girls exclaimed and asked him to go out at once as they were preparing for bed.

‘Come into the drawing-room, Doris.’ he said to Mary, and curled his forefinger at her. He was drunk and couldn’t focus her properly but he knew that she was standing there somewhere.

‘Go to bed, you’re drunk,’ Doris O’Beirne said, and he stood very upright for an instant and asked her to speak for herself.

‘Go to bed, Michael, you’re tired,’ Mary said to him. She tried to sound calm because he looked so wild.

‘Come into the drawing-room, I tell you,’ he said, as he caught her wrist and dragged her towards the door. She let out a cry, and Eithne Duggan said she’d brain him if he didn’t leave the girl alone.

‘Give me that flower-pot, Doris,’ Eithne Duggan called, and then Mary began to cry in case there might be a scene. She hated scenes. Once she heard her father and a neighbour having a row about boundary rights and she’d never forgotten it; they had both been a bit drunk, after a fair.

‘Are you cracked or are you mad?’ O’Toole said, when he perceived that she was crying.

‘I’ll give you two seconds,’ Eithne warned, as she held the flower-pot high, ready to throw it at O’Toole’s stupefied face.

‘You’re a nice bunch of hard-faced aul crows, crows,’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t give a man a squeeze,’ and he went out cursing each one of them. They shut the door very quickly and dragged the sideboard in front of the door so that he could not break in when they were asleep.