Two Lives (20 page)

In her cousin’s room there were further numbers, black figures on a small blue rectangle. Framed in badly chipped
gilt, a picture on the wall facing the bed was 91: farm workers in old-fashioned dress crowding round one of the wheels of a hay-cart, which had broken beneath the strain; near by, a dog was chasing a rat through the stubble. The mattress on this bed also was rolled up and tied. A china water jug, and the basin it stood in, were numbered 97, the wash-stand 96. There was a sun-bleached wardrobe and a dressing-table without a looking-glass, brown linoleum on the floor. The room’s single window had a view of the distant stream, and Mary Louise remembered her cousin telling her that he’d first seen the heron from his bedroom. On the mantelpiece, seeming as if he might have left them there himself, were his binoculars. A corner press, built into the two walls that formed it, was empty. So was the wardrobe. The dressing-table had a single drawer, lined with old newspaper. It, too, was empty, except for a collar-stud and a bottle of green Stephens’ ink, both of which she took.

Downstairs, in the room he had been so fond of, the scattered papers had been cleared. Books were tied into bundles. The French and German soldiers, still battling as he had left them, were numbered 39. She pulled out drawers and searched in the mahogany cupboards on either side of the door, but her cousin’s papers, his drawings and his scribbles, were not there. She had hoped to find them tied up in a bundle like the books – not an item in the auction but simply tidied away. Her Aunt Emmeline might have kept them by her, she decided; she might have packed them into the luggage she had taken to Culleen. One day, if her aunt didn’t want them any more, she’d ask if she could have them.

To pass the time, Mary Louise walked down to the stream, but today no fish were to be seen. Cars appeared on the avenue, one or two at first, then several at a time. She sat down on the grassy bank and watched them turning at the parking sign, and people getting out of them. The sound of
doors banging, and of voices, drifted down to her. She began the walk back to the house.

Some time during her first few weeks in the house above the shop Elmer had thought to amuse her by instructing her in the ingenuity of the wall-safe in the accounting office. It had no key, he began by explaining, but operated by what was known as a combination. Single digits were registered, following one another in rotation to form a given number. A lever was turned, then a second lever, and the door of the safe opened. ‘Have a go,’ Elmer had invited, as if they were two children playing. The combination of numbers had remained in her memory, often recurring to her, as if unconsciously she knew that one day she would need to make use of it.

The evening before, when Elmer was in Hogan’s and her sisters-in-law already in bed, she discovered that a whole week’s takings were there, and, in a strong-box at the back of the safe, hiding the Jameson bottle and a glass, a bundle of five-pound notes with a rubber band around it. She took everything except the coins: £403 she counted afterwards. Anything she didn’t spend she intended to return.

‘Toy soldiers!’ The auctioneer’s tone was wearily impatient, dismissive almost. ‘Colourful set of soldiers! Who’ll start me with a pound?’

No one did. Mary Louise bought the soldiers for ten shillings.

When Elmer opened the wall-safe he couldn’t believe his eyes. He’d sustained one shock already that day – Rose’s announcement that his wife had gone off cycling without her breakfast inside her. When he entered the dining-room at one o’clock he was immediately told she hadn’t returned. Now, it seemed, he’d been robbed as well.

With the door of the safe hanging open, he sat down at his desk and endeavoured to think the matter out. Had he put the
takings somewhere else? Had he moved the notes from the strong-box, taken them out and then omitted to return them? Sometimes, before setting out for Hogan’s, it was necessary to open the safe and slip out a few pounds to keep him going. Sometimes, during the day, he opened the safe because he was feeling tired and needed a pick-me-up. Could he possibly, in his haste, have forgotten to lock it again? Had someone managed to get into the accounting office, noticed the safe door ajar, helped himself, and banged the door after him? But there was no sign of a break-in, unless someone had climbed in through a window of the house and made his way downstairs on the chance that there’d be something lying about.

Sometimes if he felt a bit tired when he returned from Hogan’s he sat at the desk and had a doze. When he woke up ten minutes later he often felt befuddled, the way anyone would after a nap. He’d go up to bed then, but when he entered the accounting room in the morning he’d notice that a few things were out of place, as if he’d picked them up and in his drowsiness forgotten where they should be returned to. He kept the bottle and the glass in the safe because of privacy. He’d bought the glass in Renehan’s, knowing that if he took one out of the kitchen it would be missed.

He could have had a small one last night after he’d come in. When he’d had a doze he could have opened the safe and forgotten to close it again. He could even have taken the cash out to count it, which from time to time he did. He could have walked away and left the whole shooting-match spread out on the desk.

But the bottle and the glass were at the back of the safe, where they always were: feeling the need to, Elmer took advantage of their presence. His hands were shaking. If there had been a mirror in the office he’d have noticed that his face had acquired a grey tinge where the blood had drained from it.

He searched the office. He looked in the filing-cabinets and
behind them. Glancing down into the shop to confirm that his sisters were there and occupied, he left the office with an eye still fixed on them. He passed soundlessly through the storeroom at the back of the shop and mounted the stairs to the house. He examined the first-floor windows, but could find no evidence of breaking and entering. In the bedroom he shared he searched the drawers of the wardrobe, even looked under the bed in case he had secreted money there due to an error caused by drowsiness. He searched the pockets of his suits.

In the shop – under the pretext that the lock was becoming worn – he examined the entrance doors for any tell-tale signs. In the storeroom he looked everywhere he could think of – behind bales of cloth, at the back of shelves, in the remnant baskets. Sometimes when he was taking a pick-me-up he put the glass down on a surface in the office and later couldn’t quite remember where he’d placed it. He sometimes wandered down to the storeroom to cut off a pattern for re-ordering, and did the same thing. He’d end up having to put the main lights on in order to search for it.

Elmer returned to his office and sat down again at his desk. He tried to remember his movements the night before. He tried to remember if he had or had not poured himself a small one when he returned. No one could have made an entry through the storeroom window because it was barred. He’d had a look at the halldoor on his way from the house: it had not been tampered with.

‘Did you go into the safe?’ he demanded in the shop three-quarters of an hour later. He’d waited until a woman buying knitting wool had gone. He’d had a couple more drinks. ‘Did you open the safe?’

He knew it was most unlikely. One or other of them always put the day’s takings on the desk. He couldn’t remember if they even knew the combination.

‘What?’ Rose demanded, sharpness already in her voice.

‘There’s money gone from the safe.’

Mary Louise spoke to two men with a lorry who were offering to deliver furniture that had been purchased. She gave them the numbers of what she’d bought – the soldiers and the bedroom furniture. The men promised to arrive with the goods the following day.

She rode away, pleased that she had succeeded in securing what she had: she’d been nervous about bidding, but no one else had wanted the soldiers, and the furniture was cheaper than she’d thought it would be. On the outskirts of the town she dismounted at the blue-washed cottage her aunt had mentioned at Letty’s wedding party. She said who she was to a wan-faced woman with a child in her arms.

‘I think my aunt gave you clothes.’

‘God bless her, she did.’

‘Would you rather have the money?’

‘Money? What money’s that?’

‘If I bought the clothes back from you I’d pay for them like they were new.’

The woman, alarmed by this, called her husband. He was a big man, who had to bow his head in order to pass beneath the lintel of the door. Even before he learned the nature of Mary Louise’s request, his wife’s suspicion infected him.

‘The clothing was given to us,’ he said.

‘I know it was. I’m saying I’m willing to buy some of it back. Anything you mightn’t want.’

‘It’s for the boys growing up.’ The woman’s incomprehension made her sound stupid. She lifted the child from one arm to the other when it began to cry.

‘It’s only I thought the money might be useful. It was my cousin that died. I only want a few mementoes.’

The man nodded slowly. An agreement could be reached,
he said. He stood to one side, at the same time muttering to his wife. Mary Louise entered the cottage and selected some garments, which the woman wrapped up in newspaper for her. The parcel was tied with the length of string that had made a bundle of the clothes when they were delivered in the first place. The cottage smelt of poverty. Older children stared at Mary Louise from corners and from behind chairs. She left behind more money than had been agreed.

‘You’ll never manage that on the bike,’ the woman warned, and further string was fetched. The parcel was folded in two and tied by the man on to the carrier of the bicycle. It would be secure, he said, if she rode carefully and didn’t let the extra weight sway her.

‘Were you mad?’ Rose’s tone was harsh, disguising excitement.

He didn’t reply. When they got going with their questions they could draw the teeth out of your head. If he hadn’t been so upset he wouldn’t have told them that during the first few weeks of his marriage he’d instructed his bride in the ingenuity of the wall-safe, thinking to amuse her.

‘There she is now,’ Matilda said.

It was twenty to seven; the shop had been closed since six. It stood to reason, Rose and Matilda had declared, not once but several times. She’d gone for ever, they’d said, one of them agreeing with the other. They’d hurried upstairs to see if she’d packed her things and then reported, in disappointment, that apparently she hadn’t. But even so they continued to insist that this time their brother’s unsatisfactory wife had run away.

They stood in the accounting office, Rose and Matilda on either side of the desk, Elmer by the open safe. When they heard the sound in the house all three of them knew that Mary Louise had put away her bicycle in the yard and had
entered by the back door. They could tell it was her footfall. Rose called her.

‘I have this to return,’ Mary Louise said when she entered the accounting office. She held out most of the notes that had been in the strong-box. The rest of the money she’d used, she explained.

‘Used?’ Rose repeated. ‘
Used?
’

When he spoke Elmer’s voice was hoarse. He asked his wife where she’d been all day. They’d been beside themselves with worry, he said.

‘I was at my aunt’s auction. I bought a few things.’

Elmer reached out and picked up the notes she had placed on the desk. The rubber band was still around them. Only two of them were missing.

‘You stole money out of the safe,’ Rose said.

Elmer began to protest but the words became a jumble, running into one another incomprehensibly. Mary Louise said:

‘I wouldn’t say stole, Rose.’

‘You stole money out of the safe to go to an auction.’

‘Why didn’t you ask me?’ Elmer’s question was a whisper, just audible in the office.

‘I did, only you were drunk.’

‘My God!’ Rose cried. ‘My God, will you listen to this!’

‘That’s a disgraceful thing to say,’ Matilda interjected. ‘I don’t believe for an instant you asked him.’

‘As a matter of fact, I asked him twice. I asked him the night before last and I asked him last night.’

‘You asked him when you knew – maybe when he was asleep.’

‘I’m not a fool, Matilda. I don’t go round talking to people when they’re asleep.’

‘You go round doing all sorts of things. You go round trying to get people to eat the food left behind on an unwashed plate. You go round locking doors and interfering with property that isn’t yours.’

‘If I were you,’ Rose said to her brother, ‘I’d put the matter in the hands of the Guards. Stealing’s stealing.’

‘The furniture I bought will be coming tomorrow,’ Mary Louise said. ‘It won’t be in anyone’s way.’

With that she left the office. Her footsteps were heard on the stairs a moment later and then in the kitchen, which was partly above the accounting office.

‘Listen, Elmer.’ Rose spoke slowly and emphatically, isolating each word in a deliberate manner. ‘That girl’s worse than the brother. She’s not the full shilling, Elmer.’

‘She has caused disruption in this family,’ Matilda threw in. ‘Rose is right in what she says, Elmer.’

He did not speak. It could be true that she had asked him about the money. She might have said it and, due to evening drowsiness, he mightn’t have heard her. He’d given her the combination ages ago. Since he hadn’t been able to hear her, she might just have used it. God knows why he’d ever given her the thing.

‘The family and the household,’ Matilda reiterated. ‘There isn’t a day you can draw a breath in peace.’

‘Look at the state she’s put you in,’ Rose said. ‘You have a bottle and a glass in that safe, the way there never was in the past. She has you so’s you can’t think straight.’

‘What’s she want furniture for? Is the furniture we have not good enough for her?’

‘She won’t eat with us, Elmer. She won’t sit down in a room upstairs with us. It’s a wonder she’ll lie in a bed with you.’

There was a silence after Rose said that. It continued for a minute and then for another. It went on after that.