Brooklyn

Part Four

Her mother showed Eilis Rose's bedroom, which was filled with light from the morning sun. She had left everything, she said, exactly as it was, including all of Rose's clothes in the wardrobe and in the chest of drawers.

"I had the windows cleaned and the curtains washed and I dusted the room myself and swept it out, but other than that it's exactly the same," her mother said.

The house itself did not seem strange; Eilis noted only its solid, familiar aura, the lingering smell of cooked food, the shadows, the sense of her mother's vivid presence. But nothing had prepared her for the quietness of Rose's bedroom and she felt almost nothing as she stood looking at it. She wondered if her mother wanted her to cry now, or had left the room as it was so she could feel even more deeply Rose's death. She did not know what to say.

"And some day now," her mother said, "we can go through the clothes. Rose had just bought a new winter coat and we'll see if it suits you. She had lovely things."

Eilis suddenly felt immensely tired and thought that she should go to bed once they had eaten breakfast but she knew that her mother had been planning this moment when they would both stand in this doorway together and contemplate the room.

"You know, I sometimes think she's still alive," her mother said. "If I hear the slightest sound upstairs, I often think it must be Rose."

As they ate breakfast Eilis wished she could think of something more to say but it was hard to speak since her mother seemed to have prepared in advance every word that she said.

"I have arranged a wreath to be made specially for you to leave on her grave and we can go out in a few days if the weather keeps up and then we can let them know it's time to put Rose's name and her dates below your father's."

Eilis wondered for a moment what might happen were she to interrupt her mother and say: "I am married." She thought her mother would have a way of not hearing her, or of pretending that she had not spoken. Or else, she imagined, the glass in the window might break.

By the time she managed to say that she was tired and would need to lie down for a while, her mother had not asked her one question about her time in America, or even her trip home. Just as her mother seemed to have prepared things to say and show to her, Eilis had been planning how this first day would go. She had planned to give an account of how much more smooth the crossing from New York to Cobh had been than her first voyage from Liverpool, and how much she had enjoyed sitting up on deck taking in the sun. She had planned also to show her mother the letter from Brooklyn College telling her that she had passed her exams and would, in time, be sent a certificate to say that she was a qualified bookkeeper. She had also bought her mother a cardigan and scarf and some stockings, but her mother had almost absent-mindedly left them aside, saying that she would open them later.

Eilis loved closing the door of her old room and drawing the curtains. All she wanted to do was sleep, even though she had slept well in the hotel in Rosslare Harbour the night before. She had sent Tony a postcard from Cobh saying that she had arrived safely, and had written him a letter from Rosslare describing the journey. She was glad she did not have to write now from her bedroom, which seemed empty of life, which almost frightened her in how little it meant to her. She had put no thought into what it would be like to come home because she had expected that it would be easy; she had longed so much for the familiarity of these rooms that she had presumed she would be happy and relieved to step back into them, but, instead, on this first morning, all she could do was count the days before she went back. This made her feel strange and guilty; she curled up in the bed and closed her eyes in the hope that she might sleep.

Her mother woke her saying it was almost teatime. She had slept, she guessed, for almost six hours and wanted nothing more than to go back to sleep. Her mother told her that there was hot water in case she wanted a bath. She opened her suitcases and began to hang clothes in the wardrobe and store other things in the chest of drawers. She found a summer dress that did not seem to be too wrinkled and a cardigan and clean underwear and a pair of flat shoes.

When she came back into the kitchen, having had her bath and put on the fresh clothes, her mother looked her up and down in vague disapproval. It struck Eilis that maybe the colours she was wearing were too bright, but she did not have any darker colours.

"Now the whole town has been asking for you," her mother said. "God, even Nelly Kelly was asking for you. I saw her standing at the door of the shop and she let a big roar at me. And all your friends want you to call round, but I told them that it would be better to wait until you are settled."

Eilis wondered if her mother had always had this way of speaking that seemed to welcome no reply, and suddenly realized that she had seldom been alone with her before, she had always had Rose to stand between her and her mother, Rose who would have plenty to say to both of them, questions to ask, comments to make and opinions to offer. It must be hard for her mother too, she thought, and it would be best to wait a few days and see if her mother might become interested in her life in America, enough for her slowly to introduce the subject of Tony, enough for her to tell her mother that she was going to marry him when she went back.

They sat at the dining-room table going through all the letters of condolence and mass cards they had received in the weeks after Rose died. Eilis's mother had had a memorial card printed with a photograph of Rose at her most glamorous and happy, giving her name and her age and the date of her death, with short prayers below and on the other side of the card. These had to be sent out. But also, to those who had written letters or those who had visited the house, special notes or longer letters had to be included. Eilis's mother had divided the memorial cards into three piles: one that needed just a name and address on the envelope and a card enclosed, the second requiring a note or a letter from her, and the last needing Eilis to write a note or a letter. Eilis remembered vaguely that this had happened too after her father died, but Rose, she recalled, had taken care of everything and she had not been actively involved.

Her mother knew some of the letters of condolence she had received almost by heart and had also a list of everyone who had called to the house, which she went through slowly for Eilis, remarking on some who had come too often or stayed too long, or others who had gossiped too much or given offence by something they had said. And there were cousins of her mother from out beyond Bree who had brought neighbours of theirs, rough people from out the country, to the house, and she hoped never to lay eyes on either the cousins or their neighbours again.

Then, she said, Dora Devereux from Cush Gap and her sister Statia had come one night and they had never stopped talking, the two of them, with news about people no one else in the room had ever heard of. They had left a mass card each, her mother said, and she would write them a short note thanking them for their visit but trying not to encourage them to call again in a hurry. But Nora Webster had come, she said, with Michael who had taught the boys in school, and they were the nicest people in the whole town. She wouldn't mind, she said, if they came again, but as they had young children she didn't think they would.

As her mother read out lists of other people, Eilis was almost inclined to giggle at names she had not heard of, or thought of, during her time in America. When her mother mentioned an old woman who lived down near the Folly, Eilis could not resist speaking. "God, is she still going?"

Her mother looked sorrowful and put on her glasses again as she began to search for a letter she had mislaid from the captain of the golf club saying what a treasured lady-member Rose had been and how much she would be missed. When she found it, she looked at Eilis severely.

Every letter or note Eilis wrote had to be inspected by her mother, who often wanted it done again or a paragraph added at the end. And in her own letters, as in Eilis's, she wanted it emphasized that, since Eilis was home, she had plenty of company and needed no more visitors.

Eilis marvelled at the different ways each person had expressed condolences once they had gone beyond the first one or two sentences. Her mother tried too, in how she replied, to vary the tone and the content, to write something suitable in response to each person. But it was slow and by the end of the first day Eilis had still not gone out into the street or had any time alone. And less than half the work was done.

The following day she worked hard, saying to her mother a number of times that if they continued talking or going over each letter received they would never complete the task in front of them. Yet not only did her mother work slowly, insisting that she and not Eilis would have to write most of the letters, but wanting Eilis to look at each one she completed, but also she could not resist making regular comments on those who had written, including people Eilis had never met.

Eilis tried to change the subject a few times, wondering to her mother if they might go to Dublin together some day, or even go to Wexford on the train some afternoon. But her mother said that they would wait and see, the thing was to get these letters written and sent and then they would go through Rose's room and sort out her clothes.

As they had their tea on the second day, Eilis told her mother that if she did not contact some of her friends soon, they would be insulted. Now that she had begun, she was determined to win a free day, not to have to go straight from writing letters and addressing envelopes under her mother's sharp and increasingly cranky supervision to sorting out Rose's clothes.

"I arranged for the wreath to be delivered tomorrow," her mother said, "so that's our day for the graveyard."

"Yes, well, I'll see Annette and Nancy tomorrow evening, then," Eilis said.

"You know, they called around asking when you were coming back. I put them off, but if you want to see them, then you should invite them here."

"Maybe I'll do that now," Eilis said. "If I leave a note for Nancy, then she can get in touch with Annette. Is Nancy still going out with George? She said they were getting engaged."

"I'll let her give you all the news," her mother said, and smiled.

"George would be a great catch," Eilis said. "And he's good-looking as well."

"Oh, I don't know," her mother said. "They could make a slave out of her in that shop. And that old Mrs. Sheridan is very noble. I wouldn't have any time for her at all."

Walking out into the street brought Eilis instant relief, and, as it was a beautiful warm evening, she could happily have walked for miles. She noticed a woman studying her dress and her stockings and her shoes and then her tanned skin, and she realized with amusement as she moved towards Nancy 's house that she must look glamorous in these streets. She touched her finger where the wedding ring had been and promised herself that she would write to Tony that evening when her mother had gone to bed and work out a way of posting her letter in the morning without her mother knowing. Or maybe, she thought, it would be a good way of letting her mother gently into the secret, in case she had not seen the letters that Eilis had written to Rose, that there was someone special for her in America.

The next day, as they walked out to the graveyard with the wreath, anyone they met whom they knew stopped to talk. They complimented Eilis on how well she looked but did not do so too effusively or in too frivolous a tone because they could see that she was on her way with her mother to her sister's grave.

It was only as they walked up through the main avenue of the graveyard towards the family plot that Eilis understood fully the extent to which she had been dreading this. She felt sorry for how much she had been irritated by her mother over the previous days and now walked slowly, linking her arm while carrying the wreath. A few people in the graveyard stood and watched as they approached the grave.

There was another wreath almost withered that her mother removed, and then she stood back beside Eilis, facing the headstone.

"So, Rose," her mother said quietly, "here's Eilis, she's home now and we've brought fresh flowers out to you."

Eilis did not know if her mother expected her to say something too, but, since she was crying now, she was not sure she could make herself clear. She held her mother's hand.

"I'm praying for you, Rose, and thinking about you," Eilis whispered, "and I hope you're praying for me."

"She's praying for all of us," her mother said. "Rose is up in heaven praying for all of us."

As they stood there silently at the grave, Eilis found the idea that Rose was below the earth surrounded by darkness almost impossible to bear. She tried to think about her sister when she was alive, the light in her eyes, her voice, her way of putting a cardigan over her shoulders if she felt a draught, her way of handling their mother, making her interested in even the smallest detail of Rose's and Eilis's lives, as though she too had the same friends, the same interests, the same experiences. Eilis concentrated on Rose's spirit and tried to keep her mind from dwelling on what was happening to Rose's body just beneath them in the damp clay.

They walked home by Summerhill and then past the Fair Green to the Back Road because her mother said that she did not want to meet anybody else that day, but it occurred to Eilis that she did not want anyone to see Eilis who might invite her out or cause her to leave her mother's side at any point.

That evening, when Nancy and Annette called Eilis noticed Nancy's engagement ring immediately. Nancy explained that she had been engaged to George for two months now, but she hadn't wanted to write to Eilis about it because of Rose.

"But it's great you'll be here for the wedding. Your mother is delighted."

"When is the wedding?"

"On Saturday, the twenty-seventh of June."

"But I'll be gone back," Eilis said.

"Your mother said you'll still be here. She wrote and accepted the invitation on behalf of the two of you."

Her mother came into the room with a tray and cups and saucers and a teapot and some cakes.

"There you are now," she said. "It's lovely to see you both, a bit of life in the house again. Poor Eilis was fed up with her old mother. And we're looking forward to the wedding, Nancy. We'll have to get the best of style for it. That's what Rose would want."

She left the room before any of them could speak. Nancy looked at Eilis and shrugged. "You'll have to come now."

Eilis worked out in her head that the wedding was four days after the planned date of her departure; she also remembered that the travel agent in Brooklyn had said she could change the date as long as she notified the shipping company in advance. She decided there and then that she would stay an extra week and hoped that no one in Bartocci's would object too strongly. It would be easy to explain to Tony that her mother had misunderstood her date of departure, even though Eilis did not believe that her mother had misunderstood anything.

"Or maybe you have someone waiting impatiently for you in New York?" Annette suggested.

"Such as Mrs. Kehoe, my landlady," Eilis replied.

She knew that she could not trust herself to begin to confide in either of her friends, especially when they were together like this, without letting them know too much. And if she told them, she would soon find that one of their mothers would mention to her mother that Eilis had a boyfriend in New York. It was best, she thought, to say nothing, to talk instead about clothes and her studies and tell them about the other lodgers and Mrs. Kehoe.

They, in turn, told her the news from the town-who was going out with whom, or who was planning to get engaged, adding that the freshest news was that Nancy's sister, who had been going out with Jim Farrell on and off since Christmas, had finally broken it off with him and had a new boyfriend who was from Ferns.

"She only got off with Jim Farrell as a dare," Nancy said. "He was being as rude to her as he was to you that night, do you remember how rude he was? And we all bet money that she wouldn't get off with him. And then she did. But she couldn't bear him in the end, she said he was a terrible pain in the neck, even though George says he's really a nice fellow if you get to know him, and George was in school with him."

"George is very charitable," Annette said.

Jim Farrell, Nancy said, was coming to the wedding as a friend of George, but her sister was demanding that her new boyfriend from Ferns also be invited. In all this talk of boyfriends and plans for the wedding, Eilis realized that if she were to tell Nancy or Annette about her own secret wedding, attended by no one except her and Tony, they would respond with silence and bewilderment. It would seem too strange.

For the next few days as she moved around the town, and on Sunday, when she went to eleven o'clock mass with her mother, people commented on Eilis's beautiful clothes, her sophisticated hairstyle and her suntan. She tried to make plans to see Annette or Nancy either together or separately every day, telling her mother in advance what she intended to do. On the following Wednesday, when she told her mother that, if it was fine, she was going the next day in the early afternoon to Curracloe with George Sheridan and Nancy and Annette, her mother demanded that she cancel her outing that evening and begin the task of going through Rose's belongings, deciding what to keep and what to give away.

They took out the clothes hanging in the wardrobe and put them on the bed. Eilis wanted to make clear that she did not need any of her sister's clothes and that it would be best to give away everything to a charity. But her mother was already setting aside Rose's winter coat, so recently acquired, and a number of frocks that she said could easily be altered to fit Eilis.

"I won't have much room in my suitcase," Eilis said, "and the coat is lovely but the colour is too dark for me."

Her mother, still busy sorting the clothes, pretended that she had not heard her.

"What we'll do is we'll take the frocks and the coat to the dressmaker's in the morning and they'll look different when they are the proper size, when they match your new American figure."

Eilis, in turn, began to ignore her mother as she opened the bottom drawer of the chest and poured its contents on to the floor. She wanted to make sure that she found her letters to Rose, if they were here, before her mother did. There were old medals and brochures, even hairnets and hairpins, which had not been used for years, and folded handkerchiefs and some photographs that Eilis put aside, as well as a large number of score cards for golf. But there was no sign in this drawer, or in any of the others, of the letters.

"Most of this is rubbish, Mammy," she said. "It'll be best just to keep the photographs and throw the rest away."

"Oh, I'll need to look at all that, but come over here now and help me fold these scarves."

Eilis refused to go to the dressmaker's the following morning, telling her mother finally and emphatically that she did not want to wear any of Rose's frocks or coats, no matter how elegant they were or how much they cost.

"Do you want me to dump them, then?"

"There are a lot of people would love them."

"But they are not good enough for you?"

"I have my own clothes."

"Well, I'll leave them in the wardrobe in case you change your mind. You could give them away and then find someone you didn't know at mass on Sunday wearing them. That'd be nice now."

In the post office Eilis had bought enough stamps and special envelopes for letters to America. She wrote to Tony explaining that she was staying a few weeks extra and to the shipping company at the office in Cobh cancelling the return passage she had booked and asking them to let her know how to arrange a later date for her return. She thought that she would wait until closer to the date to alert Miss Fortini and Mrs. Kehoe to her late arrival. She wondered if it would be wise to use illness as an excuse. She told Tony about the visit to Rose's grave and about Nancy's engagement, assuring him that she kept his ring close to her so that she could think about him when she was alone.

At lunchtime she put a towel and her bathing costume and a pair of sandals into a bag and walked to Nancy's house, where George Sheridan was going to collect them. It had been a beautiful morning, the air sweet and still, and it was hot, almost stifling in the house as they waited for George to arrive. When they heard the sound of the horn beeping in the station wagon he used to make deliveries they went outside. Eilis was surprised to see Jim Farrell as he held the door open for her and then got in beside her, allowing Nancy to sit beside George in the front passenger seat.

Eilis nodded coldly at Jim and sat as far away from him as she could. She had spotted him at mass the previous Sunday but had been careful to avoid him. As they moved out of the town, she realized that he, and not Annette, was coming with them; she was angry with Nancy for not having told her. She would have cancelled had she known. She was further infuriated when George and Jim began a discussion about some rugby game as the car made its way along the Osbourne Road towards Vinegar Hill and then turned right towards Curracloe. She thought for a moment of interrupting the two men to tell them that in Brooklyn there was a Vinegar Hill too but that it was nothing like the Vinegar Hill that overlooked Enniscorthy, even though it was called after it. Anything, she thought, to shut them up. Instead, she decided that she would not speak once to Jim Farrell, not even acknowledge his presence, and that as soon as there was a gap in the conversation she would introduce a topic on which he could not contribute.

When George had parked the car and George and Nancy moved ahead towards the boardwalk that led over the sand dunes to the beach, Jim Farrell spoke to her very quietly, asking her how her mother was, saying that he and his mother and father had been to Rose's funeral mass. His mother, he said, had been very fond of her in the golf club. "All in all," he said, "it was the saddest thing that has happened in the town for a long time."

She nodded. If he wanted her to think well of him, she thought, then she should let him know as soon as possible that she had no intention of doing so, but this was hardly the moment.

"It must be difficult being home," he said. "Although it must be nice for your mother."

She turned and smiled sadly at him. They did not speak again until they reached the strand and caught up with George and Nancy.

Jim, it turned out, had not brought a towel or his togs and said that the water was, in any case, probably too cold. Eilis looked at Nancy and then shot a withering glance at Jim for Nancy to witness. As Jim removed his shoes and socks and rolled up the bottoms of his trousers and went down to the water, the other three began to change. If this had been years ago, Eilis thought, she would have worried during the entire journey from Enniscorthy about her swimsuit and its style, about whether she was too unshapely or awkward on the beach, or what George and Jim would think of her. But now, however, that she was still suntanned from the boat and from her trips to Coney Island with Tony, she felt oddly confident as she walked down the strand, passing Jim Farrell paddling at the edge of the water without saying a word to him, wading out and then, as the first high wave approached, swimming into it as it broke and then out beyond it.

She knew he was watching her and the idea that she should really have splashed him as she passed him made her smile. For a second it came into her mind as something she could tell Rose and that Rose would love, but then she realized with a sense of regret close to an actual pain that Rose was dead and there were things like this, ordinary things, that she would never know, that would not matter to her now.

Later, Nancy and George walked together towards Ballyconnigar, leaving Eilis and Jim to follow. Jim began to ask her questions about America. He said he had two uncles in New York and he used to imagine them among the skyscrapers of Manhattan until he found out that they were two hundred miles from New York City. It was in New York State, he said, and the village one of them was in was smaller than Bunclody. When she told him that a priest, who had been a friend of her sister, had encouraged her to go and helped her there, he asked her the name of the priest. When she said Father Flood, she was taken aback for a moment when Jim Farrell said that his parents knew him well; his father, he thought, had been in St. Peter's College with him.

Later, they drove to Wexford and had their tea in the Talbot Hotel, where the wedding party was going to be held. When they got back to Enniscorthy, Jim invited them to have a drink in his father's pub before going home. His mother, who was serving behind the bar, knew all about their outing and greeted Eilis with an effusive warmth that Eilis found almost unsettling. Before they parted, they agreed that they would repeat the outing the following Sunday. George mentioned the possibility of going from Curracloe to the dance in Courtown.

Eilis had no key to the front door of the house in Friary Street so she had to knock; she hoped that her mother was not asleep. She could hear her coming slowly to answer the door and thought she must have been in the kitchen. Her mother spent some time opening locks and pulling back bolts.

"Well, here you are," her mother said, and smiled. "I'll have to get you a key."

"I hope I didn't wake you."

"No, when I saw you going off I thought to myself that you'd be back late, but it isn't that late because there's still a bit of light in the sky."

Her mother closed the door and led her towards the kitchen.

"Now, tell me something," she said, "did you have a great outing?"

"It was nice, Mammy, and we went to Wexford for our tea."

"And I hope that Jim Farrell wasn't too ignorant?"

"He was fine. Minding his manners."

"Well, the big news is that Davis's offices sent up for you and they have a crisis because all the lorry drivers have to be paid tomorrow and so do all the men working in the mill and one girl is on her holidays and Alice Roche is sick and they were at their wits' end when someone thought of you. And they want you to be there at half past nine in the morning, and I said you would be. It was better to say yes than no."

"How did they know I was here?"

"Sure the whole town knows you're here. So I'll have your breakfast on the table at half past eight and you'd better wear sensible clothes. Nothing too American now."

Her mother had a smile of satisfaction on her face and this came as a relief to Eilis, who had, over the previous days, begun to dread the silences between them and resent her mother's lack of interest in discussing anything, any single detail, about her time in America. They spoke now in the kitchen about Nancy and George and the wedding and arranged to go to Dublin the following Tuesday to buy an outfit for the day. They discussed what they should buy Nancy as a wedding present.

When Eilis went upstairs she felt, for the first time, less uneasy about being home and found that she was almost looking forward to the day dealing with wages at Davis's and then the weekend. As she was undressing, however, she noticed a letter on the bed and instantly saw that it was from Tony, who had put his name and address on the envelope. Her mother must have left it there, having decided not to mention it. She opened it with a feeling close to alarm, wondering for a second if there was anything wrong with him, relieved when she read the opening sentences that declared his love for her and emphasized how much he missed her.

As she read the letter she wished that she could take it downstairs and read it to her mother. The tone was stiff, formal, old-fashioned; the letter was clearly by someone not used to writing letters. Yet Tony managed to put something of himself into it, his warmth, his kindness and his enthusiasm for things. And there was also something there all the time in him, she thought, that was in this letter too. It was a feeling that were he to turn his head, she might be gone. That afternoon, as she had enjoyed the sea and warm weather and the company of Nancy and George and even, towards the end, Jim, she had been away from Tony, far away, basking in the ease of what had suddenly become familiarity.

She wished now that she had not married him, not because she did not love him and intend to return to him, but because not telling her mother or her friends made every day she had spent in America a sort of fantasy, something she could not match with the time she was spending at home. It made her feel strangely as though she were two people, one who had battled against two cold winters and many hard days in Brooklyn and fallen in love there, and the other who was her mother's daughter, the Eilis whom everyone knew, or thought they knew.

She wished she could go downstairs now and tell her mother what she had done, but she knew she would not. It would be simpler to claim that work called her back to Brooklyn and write then, when she had returned, to say that she was seeing a man whom she loved and hoped to get engaged to and married to. She would only be home for less than two more weeks. As she lay in bed she thought it would be wise to make the best of it, take no big decisions in what would be an interlude. A chance to be at home like this would be unlikely to come her way again ever. In the morning, she thought, she would get up early and write to Tony and post the letter on her way to work.

In the morning it was hard not to think that she was Rose's ghost, being fed and spoken to in the same way at the same time by her mother, having her clothes admired using the same words as were used with Rose, and then setting out briskly for work. As she took the same route Eilis had to stop herself walking with Rose's elegant, determined walk, and move more slowly.

In the office Maria Gethings, about whom Rose used to talk, was waiting for her and brought her into the inner sanctum where the cash was kept. The problem was, Maria said, that this was the busy season and all the lorry drivers and the men working in the mill had done overtime the previous week. They had filled out their hours but no one had worked out the money they were due, which was set out on a special form and added to their usual wages, which came with another form, a wage slip. They were not even in alphabetical order, Maria said.

Eilis said that if Maria left her alone for about two hours with all the information about the rates at which overtime was paid, she would work out a system, as long as she could ask Maria questions whenever she needed. She said that she would function best on her own but she would let Maria know if she had even the smallest query. Maria said that she would close the door and leave her undisturbed in this office, mentioning on her way out that the men usually came for their wage packets at around five and the money was in cash in the safe to pay them with.

Eilis found a stapler and began to attach the overtime form for each man to his normal wage sheet. She put them in alphabetical order. When she had all of them done, she went through each overtime form, calculating from the list of rates, which varied considerably depending on years of service and levels of responsibility, how much each man was owed and then adding this to his wages on the wage sheet, so that there was a single figure for each man. She wrote this figure on a separate list, which she then had to tot up to find out how much money was needed to pay the men everything they were owed. The work was straightforward because the terms were clear, and, so long as she concentrated on making no mistakes in the addition, she thought she would be able to complete the task, provided there were enough loose notes and coins in the safe.

She took a short lunch break, insisting to Maria that she would not need any help, just a pile of envelopes and someone to open the safe and run to the bank or the post office for loose change if there was not enough. By four o'clock she had everything done and the amount of cash used up equalled the amount in her original tot. She had given each man a slip in his envelope that included details of the money due, and had also kept a copy of each for the office files.

This was the work she had been dreaming about as she had stood on the shop floor in Bartocci's, seeing the office workers walking in and out as she was telling customers that the Sepia- and Coffee-coloured stockings were for lighter skin and the Red Fox for darker, or as she had sat listening to the lectures and preparing for the exams in Brooklyn College. She knew that once she and Tony were married she would stay at home, cleaning the house and preparing food and shopping and then having children and looking after them as well. She had never mentioned to Tony that she would like to keep working, even if just part time, maybe doing the accounts from home for someone who needed a bookkeeper. In Bartocci's she did not think any of the women in the office were married. She wondered, as she came to the end of her day's work at Davis's, if maybe she could do the bookkeeping for the company that Tony was going to set up with his brothers. As she thought about this, she realized that she had forgotten to write to him that morning and resolved that she would make time that evening and write to him then.

On Sunday, just after lunch, with the weather still warm, George and Nancy and Jim pulled up in front of her house on Friary Street. Jim held the back door of the car open for her while she got in. He had a white shirt on with the sleeves rolled up; she noticed the black hair on his arms and the whiteness of his skin. He was wearing hair oil; she thought that he had made a real effort in how he dressed. As they left the town, he spoke to her quietly about how the pub had been the previous night and how lucky he was that, even though his parents had made it over to him, they were still willing to work there when he wanted to go out.

George said that Curracloe might be too crowded and he thought they should go to Cush Gap instead and make their way down the cliff. This was where Eilis had come with Rose and her brothers and her parents when they were children, but she had not been there for years nor thought about it. As they drove through Blackwater village she almost pointed out the places she knew, such as Mrs. Davis's pub where her father had gone in the evenings, or Jim O'Neill's shop. But she stopped herself. She did not want to sound like someone who had come back home after a long time away. And, she thought, this was something that she might never see again on a summer Sunday like this, but for the others it was nothing, just a decision George had made to go to a quieter place.

She was sure that if she began to talk about her memories of this place, they would notice the difference. Instead, she took in each building as they drove up the hill before the turn to Ballyconnigar, remembering things that had happened, small outings to the village with Jack, or a day when their cousins the Doyles had come to visit. This made her silent and made her feel withdrawn from the ease and the quiet sense of comfort and cheer in the car as it turned left and made its way along the narrow sandy lane to Cush.

Once they had parked the car, George and Nancy walked ahead towards the cliff, leaving Jim and Eilis walking behind. Jim was carrying his own togs and towel as well as her bag with her swimsuit and towel. When they came halfway down the lane, they stopped for a moment at Cullens' house, in front of which Jim's old teacher Mr. Redmond was sitting wearing a straw hat. He was clearly on his holidays.

"This might be the only summer we'll get, sir," Jim said.

"Best take full advantage of it so," Mr. Redmond replied. Eilis noticed that his speech was slurred.

As they moved on, Jim said in a low voice that Mr. Redmond was the only teacher he had ever liked and it was a pity he had had the stroke.

"Where's his son?" Eilis asked.

"Eamon? He's studying, I'd say. That's what he usually does."

When they came to the bottom of the lane and peered over the edge of the cliff, they saw that the sea below them was calm, almost smooth. The sand close to the water's edge was a dark yellow. There was a line of sea birds flying low over the waves, which seemed barely to swell before they broke quietly, almost noiselessly. There was a vague mist that masked the line between the horizon and the sky but otherwise the sky was a pure blue.

George had to run down the last stretch of sand at the gap in the cliff; he waited for Nancy to follow and held her in his arms. Jim did the same, and Eilis found that, when he caught her, he held her in an embrace that was almost too close and he did this as though it was something they were used to doing. She shivered for a second at the thought of Tony seeing her now.

They spread two rugs out on the sand as Jim took off his shoes and socks and went down to test the water, returning to say that it was almost warm, much better than the previous day, and he was going to change and go in for a swim. George said he would go with him. The last to get down in the water, they agreed, would have to buy dinner. Nancy and Eilis put on their swimsuits but stayed sitting on the rugs.

"They're like a pair of children sometimes," Nancy said as they watched George and Jim involved in horseplay in the sea. "If they had a ball, they'd spend an hour playing with it."

"Whatever happened to Annette?" Eilis asked.

"I knew you wouldn't come on Thursday if I told you Jim was coming, and I knew you wouldn't come with just me and George, so I told you Annette was coming; it was a white lie," Nancy said.

"And whatever happened to Jim's manners?"

"He's only bad-mannered when he's nervous," Nancy said. "He doesn't mean it. He's a big softie. Also, he likes you."

"When did that start?"

"When he saw you at eleven o'clock mass with your mother last Sunday."

"Will you do me a favour, Nancy?"

"What is it?"

"Will you run down to the sea and tell Jim to go and take a running jump at himself? Or, better still, go down and tell him that you know someone who lives beside a marl pond, and ask him why he doesn't drop in sometime."

They both fell over laughing on the rug.

"Have you everything ready for the wedding?" Eilis asked. She wanted to hear no more about Jim Farrell.

"Everything except my future mother-in-law, who makes a new statement every day about something she wants or doesn't want. My mother thinks she's an awful old snob."

"Well, she is, isn't she?"

"I'll knock that out of her," Nancy said, "but I'll wait until after the wedding."

When George and Jim returned, all four of them set out walking along the strand, the two men running at first to dry themselves. Eilis was amused at how tight and flimsy their swimming togs were. No American man would be seen on a beach in anything like that, she thought. Nor would two men in Coney Island move as unself-consciously as these two did, seeming not to be alert at all to the two women watching them as they ran awkwardly ahead, keeping close to the hard sand at the water's edge.

No one else was on this stretch of strand. Eilis understood now why George had chosen this lonely place. He and Jim, and perhaps Nancy too, had planned a perfect day in which she and Jim would be just as much a couple as Nancy and George. She realized, as they turned back and Jim began talking to her again, letting the other two go ahead, that she liked his bulky, easygoing presence and the tone in his voice, which came so naturally from the streets of the town. He had clear blue eyes, she thought, that saw no harm in anything. And she was fully aware that these blue eyes of his lingered on her now with an interest that was unmistakable.

She smiled at the thought that she would go along with most of it. She was on her holidays and it was harmless, but she would not go into the sea with him as though she were his girlfriend. She would, she reasoned, like to be able to face Tony knowing that she had not done that. She and Jim stood and watched George and Nancy playing in the shallow water and moving together towards the waves. When Jim suggested that they follow, she shook her head and walked on ahead of him. She wondered for a second, as he caught up with her, how she would feel if she learned that Tony had gone to Coney Island on a day like today with a friend and two young women, one of whom he spent time alone with walking by the sea. It was impossible, she thought, something he would never do. And he would suffer at even the slightest hint of what she was doing now as they arrived back at where they had left their belongings and Jim smoothed out the rug for her and, still wearing only his togs, smiled and settled himself down beside her under the warm sun.

"My father says that this part of the coast is being badly eroded," he said as though they were in the middle of a conversation.

"We used to stay here years ago for a week or two in the hut that Michael Webster and Nora bought. I can't remember who owned it when we rented it. You would notice the change every summer when you came down," she said.

"My father says that he remembers your father here years ago."

"They all used to come on bicycles from the town."

"Are there beaches near Brooklyn?"

"Oh, yes," she said, "and in the summer they're always crowded at the weekend."

"I'd say you'd get every type of person there," he said as though he approved of the idea.

"Every type," she said.

They did not speak for a while as Eilis sat up and watched Nancy floating on the water with George swimming close to her. Jim sat up and watched them too.

Quietly, he spoke: "Will we go and try the water?"

Eilis was waiting for this and had already planned to say no. If he had insisted too much she had even planned to say that she had someone special in Brooklyn, a man to whom she would be returning soon. But his tone, when he spoke, was unexpected in its humility. Jim spoke like someone who could be easily hurt. She wondered if it was an act, but he was looking at her with an expression so vulnerable that she, for a second, could not make her mind up what to do. She realized that, if she refused, he might walk alone down to the water like someone defeated; somehow she did not want to have to witness that.

"Okay," she said.

For a second as they waded into the water he caught her hand. But as a wave approached she moved away from him and without hesitating any further swam directly out. She did not turn to see if he was following her but kept swimming, alert to where Nancy and George were kissing and holding each other in a firm embrace and trying to avoid them as much as Jim Farrell.

She appreciated how Jim, despite being a strong swimmer himself, did not seek to follow her at first; instead he did a backstroke parallel to the beach and left her alone. She was enjoying the water, having forgotten its purity and calmness. And as she wallowed there, staring at the blue sky, kicking her feet to keep herself afloat, Jim approached her but was careful not to touch her or come too close. When he caught her eye, he smiled. Everything he did now, every word he said and every move he made, seemed deliberate, restrained and well thought out, done so as not to irritate her or appear to be moving too fast. And almost as an aspect of this care, he made his interest in her totally clear.

She understood that she should not have let things move so quickly, that she should have told Nancy after their first outing that her duty lay in being at home with her mother, or accompanying her mother on outings, and that she could not go out again with Nancy and George and Jim Farrell. She thought for a second of confiding in Nancy, not telling her the whole truth but telling her that she would soon be engaged when she returned to Brooklyn. But she realized that it was best to do nothing. She would, in any case, be going back soon.

When she got out of the water with Jim, George had a camera ready. As Nancy watched, Jim stood behind Eilis with his arms around her; she could feel the heat from him, his torso pressing against her as George took several more pictures of them before Jim took shots of George and Nancy in the same pose. Soon, as they saw a lone walker coming north from Keating's, they waited and George, having shown the outsider how the camera worked, asked him to take shots of all four of them. Jim moved as though casually, but nothing he did was casual, Eilis thought, as she felt the weight of his body once more behind her. He was careful, however, not to move as close to her as George moved to Nancy. Not once did she feel his crotch pushing against her. It would be too much and she believed he had decided not to risk it. When the photographs were taken she went back to the rug and changed and lay in the sunshine until the others were ready to go.

On the way back to Enniscorthy it was decided that they would have tea in the grill of the Courtown Hotel, which George thought was open until nine, and they would go to the dance afterwards. George teased Nancy about how long she would take to get ready, Nancy insisting that both she and Eilis would have to wash their hair after the sea water.

"Quick wash, then," George said.

"It can't be quick," Nancy replied.

Jim looked at Eilis and smiled. "God, they're not even married yet and they are bickering."

"It's for a good cause," Nancy said.

"She's right," Eilis said.

Jim reached over affectionately and squeezed her hand. "I'm sure you're both right," he said with enough sarcasm and self-mockery to prevent himself sounding as though he were trying to win favour with her.

They agreed to be ready by seven thirty. Eilis's mother went through all her dresses and shoes while she washed her hair. She had the iron and the ironing board prepared in case there were creases in the dress they chose. When Eilis appeared with a towel over her head, she saw that her mother had selected a blue dress with a floral pattern, one that was Tony's favourite, and a pair of blue shoes. Eilis was almost going to tell her that she could not wear this, but she realized that any explanation she invented would cause unnecessary tension so she went ahead and put it on. Her mother, who seemed not to resent being left alone for the rest of the evening but rather excited by Eilis's dressing up to go out again, set about ironing it while Eilis put curlers in her hair, and turned on the electric drier that had belonged to Rose.

George and Jim both knew the owner of the Courtown Hotel from rugby and they had arranged a special table with candles and wine and a special menu with champagne afterwards. Eilis observed other diners glancing over at them as though they were the most important people in the restaurant. George and Jim were both wearing sports jackets and ties and flannel trousers. As Eilis watched Nancy perusing the menu and ordering her food, she noticed something new about her: she was more refined than before, taking the solemnity of the waiter's manners seriously, whereas a few years earlier she would have raised her eyes to heaven at his pomposity, or said something casual and friendly to him. Soon, Eilis thought, she would be Mrs. George Sheridan and that would count for something in the town. She was beginning to play the role with relish.

Later in the bar of the hotel George and Jim and the owner of the hotel looked handsome and smooth as they spoke about the rugby season that had ended. It was strange, Eilis thought, that George and Jim were not in Courtown with the sisters of their friends. Everyone in the town, she knew, had been surprised when George began going out with Nancy, whose brothers would never have played rugby in their lives, and presumed it was because Nancy was so good-looking and had such good manners. And two years ago, Eilis remembered, when Jim Farrell had been openly rude to her, she thought it was because she came from a family that did not own anything in the town. Now that she was back from America, she believed, she carried something with her, something close to glamour, which made all the difference to her as she sat with Nancy watching the men talk.

She did not expect to see so many people from Enniscorthy in the dancehall. Many of the dancers seemed to know that Nancy and George were soon to be married and they were congratulated as they moved around the hall. Jim, Eilis noticed, had a way of nodding at people, acknowledging simply that he recognized them. It was not unfriendly, nor was it an invitation to approach him. He seemed to her more severe than George, who was all smiles, and she wondered if that came from running a pub, knowing who many people were and managing at the same time to stand apart from them.

She danced with Jim all night except when George and Jim switched partners and then only briefly. She knew that she was being watched and commented on by people from the town, especially when the tempo of the music was fast and it was clear that she and Jim were good dancers, but also later, when the lights went down and the music was slow and they danced close to each other.

Outside, when the dance was over, the night was still warm. Jim and she let George and Nancy walk ahead of them towards the car and told them they would join them soon. All day Jim had behaved impeccably: he had not bored or irritated her, or pressed himself too much on her; he seemed immensely considerate, funny at times, willing to be silent, polite as well. He also stood out in the dancehall, where some were drunk or others were too old or looked as though they had travelled to Courtown on tractors. He was handsome, graceful, smart, and, as the night wore on, she was proud to be with him. Now, they found a space in between a guest house and a new bungalow and began to kiss. Jim moved slowly; at intervals he held her head in his hands so that he could look at her eyes in the semi-darkness and kiss her passionately. The feel of his tongue in her mouth made her respond to him with ease at first and then with something close to real excitement.

In the car on the way back to Enniscorthy, as they sat together in the back seat, they tried to disguise what they were doing but eventually gave up, causing much laughter on the part of Nancy and George.

On Monday morning, when there was a message for Eilis to come down to Davis 's, she presumed that it meant they wanted to pay her. When she turned up, she found Maria Gethings waiting for her once more.

"Mr. Brown wants to see you," Maria said. "I'll check if he has anyone with him now."

Mr. Brown had been Rose's boss and was one of the owners of the mill. Eilis knew he came from Scotland and had often seen him driving in a very large and shiny car. She had noticed the awe in Maria's voice when she mentioned his name. After a short time, Maria returned and said that he would see Eilis immediately. She ushered Eilis down a corridor and into a room at the end. Mr. Brown was sitting in a high leather chair behind a long desk.

"Miss Lacey," he said, standing up and leaning across the desk to shake Eilis's hand. "I wrote to your mother when poor Rose died and we were very cut up and I wondered if I should have called as well. And I am told you are home from America and Maria tells me that you have a certificate in bookkeeping. Is it American bookkeeping?"

Eilis explained that she did not think there was any great difference between the two systems.

"I don't suppose there is," Mr. Brown said. "Anyway, Maria was very happy with how you did the wages last week, but we were not surprised, of course, you being Rose's sister. Rose was the essence of efficiency and is much missed."

"Rose was a great example to me," Eilis said.

"Until the busy season is over," Mr. Brown went on, "it will be hard for us to know how we are fixed in the office, but we may certainly need a bookkeeper and someone familiar with how the wages are paid in the long term. But we would like you to continue with the wages on a part-time basis and then we can speak to you in a while."

"I will be going back to the United States," Eilis said.

"Well, yes, of course," Mr. Brown said. "But you and I will speak again before you make any firm decisions."

Eilis was about to say that she had already made a firm decision, but since Mr. Brown's tone suggested that he did not need just now to have any further discussion on the matter, she realized that she was not expected to reply. Instead, she stood up, and Mr. Brown did too, accompanying her to the door and sending his regards to her mother before he saw her out to the care of Maria Gethings, who had an envelope for her ready with cash inside.

That evening Eilis had promised to go to Nancy 's house to look at the list of people invited to the wedding breakfast and work out with her where they should be seated. She recounted her interview with Mr. Brown with puzzlement.

"Two years ago," she said, "he wouldn't even see me. I know that Rose asked him if there was any possibility of a job for me and he just said no. Just no."

"Well, things have changed."

"And two years ago Jim Farrell seemed to think it was his duty to ignore me in the Athenaeum even though George had practically asked him to dance with me."

"You have changed," Nancy said. "You look different. Everything about you is different, not for those who know you, but for people in the town who only know you to see."

"What's changed?"

"You seem more grown up and serious. And in your American clothes you look different. You have an air about you. Jim can't stop trying to get us to find more excuses to go out together."

Later, as Eilis had a cup of tea with her mother before they went to bed, her mother reminded her that she knew the Farrells, although she had not been in the house, which was over the pub, for years.

"You don't notice it much from outside," she said, "but it is one of the nicest houses in the town. The two rooms upstairs have double doors between them and I remember even years ago people used to comment on how large it was. And I hear that the parents are moving out to Glenbrien where she's from, to a house that her aunt left her. The father loves horses, he's a great man for the races, and he is going to have horses out there, or so I heard. And Jim is getting the whole place."

"He'll miss them so," Eilis said. "Because they run the pub when he wants to go out."

"Oh, it'll be all very gradual, I'd say," her mother replied.

Upstairs on the bed Eilis found two letters from Tony and she realized, almost with a start, that she had not written to him as she had intended. She looked at the two envelopes, at his handwriting, and she stood in the room with the door closed wondering how strange it was that everything about him seemed remote. And not only that, but everything else that had happened in Brooklyn seemed as though it had almost dissolved and was no longer richly present for her-her room in Mrs. Kehoe's, for example, or her exams, or the trolley-car from Brooklyn College back home, or the dancehall, or the apartment where Tony lived with his parents and his three brothers, or the shop floor at Bartocci's. She went through all of it as though she were trying to recover what had seemed so filled with detail, so solid, just a few weeks before.

She put the letters on the chest of drawers and decided that she would reply when she returned from Dublin the following evening. She would tell Tony about all the preparations for Nancy 's wedding, the outfits that she and her mother had bought. She might even tell him about her interview with Mr. Brown and how she had informed him that she would be returning to Brooklyn. She would write as though she had not yet received these two letters and she would not open them now, she thought, but wait until she had written her own letter.

The idea that she would leave all of this-the rooms of the house once more familiar and warm and comforting-and go back to Brooklyn and not return for a long time again frightened her now. She knew as she sat on the edge of the bed and took her shoes off and then lay back with her arms behind her head that she had spent every day putting off all thought of her departure and what she would meet on her arrival.

Sometimes it came as sharp reminder, but much of the time it did not come at all. She had to make an effort now to remember that she really was married to Tony, that she would face into the sweltering heat of Brooklyn and the daily boredom of the shop floor at Bartocci's and her room at Mrs. Kehoe's. She would face into a life that seemed now an ordeal, with strange people, strange accents, strange streets. She tried to think of Tony now as a loving and comforting presence, but she saw instead someone she was allied with whether she liked it or not, someone who was, she thought, unlikely to allow her to forget the nature of the alliance and his need for her to return.

A few days before the wedding, when Eilis had been working a half-day at Davis's office and Jim Farrell had collected her there and they had gone for a meal in Wexford and then to the pictures and were now on the way home, he asked her when she planned to go back to Brooklyn. She had received a letter from the shipping company suggesting that she contact them by telephone when she wished to arrange her return passage, but she had not been in touch with them.

"I still have to phone the shipping company, but it will probably be the week after next."

"You are going to be missed here," he said.

"It's very hard leaving my mother on her own," she replied.

He said nothing for a while until they were passing through Oylegate.

"My parents are going to move out to the country soon. My mother's people came from Glenbrien and her aunt left her a place out there and they're doing work on it at the moment."

Eilis did not say that her mother had already told her this. She did not want Jim to know that they were discussing his living arrangements.

"So I'll be on my own in the house over the pub."

She was going to ask him in jest if he could cook but realized that it might sound like a leading question.

"You must come for your tea some evening," he said. "My parents would love to meet you."

"Thank you," she said.

"We'll arrange it after the wedding."

It was decided that Jim would drive Eilis and her mother and Annette O'Brien and her younger sister Carmel to the wedding reception in Wexford after the ceremony in Enniscorthy Cathedral. That morning they were awake early in Friary Street, her mother coming into her bedroom with a cup of tea, telling her that it was a cloudy day and she was hoping now that the rain would keep off. The night before, both of them had left their clothes out carefully for the morning. Eilis's costume, which she had bought in Arnotts in Dublin, had had to be altered, as the skirt and the sleeves were too long. It was bright red and with it she was wearing a white cotton blouse with accessories she had brought from America -stockings with a tinge of red, red shoes, a red hat and a white handbag. Her mother was going to wear a grey tweed suit that she had bought in Switzers. She was sad that she had to wear plain flat shoes, as her feet hurt her now and swelled up if there was any heat or if she had to walk too far. She was going to wear a grey silk blouse that had belonged to Rose not only, she said, because she liked it but because Rose had loved it and it would be nice at Nancy's wedding to wear something that Rose had loved.

It had been arranged that if it were raining Jim would collect them and drive them to the cathedral but if it were fine he would meet them there. Eilis had written several letters to Tony and had opened one that had told her about a trip to Long Island with Maurice and Laurence to look at the site they had bought and to divide it into five plots. There were strong rumours now, he said, that services like water and electricity would soon be coming very cheaply in their direction. Eilis folded this letter and put it in the drawer with Tony's other letters and the photographs from the day at the strand in Cush, which Nancy had given her. She stood now looking at the picture of herself and Jim, how happy they seemed: he with his arms around her neck, grinning at the camera, and she leaning her head back, smiling as though she had not a care in the world. She did not know what she was going to do with these photographs.

As her mother watched the weather, Eilis knew she was hoping for rain, that it would please her more than anything for Jim Farrell to come in his car to collect her and Eilis and take them the short distance to the cathedral. It was one of those days when the neighbours, because of the wedding, would feel free to come openly to their doors to inspect Eilis and her mother in all their style and wish them a nice day out. And there would be neighbours, Eilis thought, who already were aware that she had been seeing Jim Farrell and would view him in the same way as her mother did, as a great catch, a young man in the town with his own business. Being collected by Jim Farrell, she thought, would be for her mother the highlight of everything that had happened since Eilis came home.

When the first drops of rain hit against the glass of the window, a look of undisguised satisfaction appeared on her mother's face. "We won't risk it," she said. "I'd be afraid we'd get as far as the Market Square and then it would spill. I'd worry about the red running into that white blouse of yours."

Her mother then spent the next half-hour at the front window watching in case the rain eased off or in case Jim Farrell came early. Eilis stayed in the kitchen but she made sure she had everything ready were Jim to come. Her mother came to the kitchen at one point to say that they would usher him into the parlour, but Eilis insisted that they should both be ready to leave once Jim came in his car. Eventually, she went to the window with her mother to look out.

When Jim came, he opened the driver's door and emerged briskly with an umbrella. Both Eilis and her mother moved fussily into the hall. Her mother answered the door.

"Don't worry about the time," Jim said. "I'll drop the two of you straight in front of the cathedral and then I'll park. I think we have plenty of time."

"I was going to offer you a cup of tea," her mother said.

"No time for that, though," Jim said, and smiled. He was wearing a light suit, a blue shirt with a striped blue tie and tancoloured shoes.

"You know I think this is just a shower," her mother said as she made her way out to the car. Eilis saw that Mags Lawton next door had appeared and was waving. She stood at the door waiting for Jim to come back with the umbrella but did not return Mags's wave or encourage her to make any comment. Just as she closed the door and went towards the car, Eilis saw two other doors opening and knew that, much to her mother's delight, news would spread that Eilis and her mother in all their style had been collected by Jim Farrell.

"Jim is a perfect gentleman," her mother said as they walked into the cathedral. Her mother, Eilis noticed, moved slowly, with an air of pride and dignity, not looking to her left or her right, fully aware that she was being watched and fully enjoying the spectacle that she and Eilis, soon to be joined by Jim Farrell, were making in the church.

This was nothing, however, to the spectacle of Nancy in a white veil and a long white dress walking slowly up the aisle with her father while George waited for her at the altar. As the mass began and the church had settled down, Eilis, with Jim beside her, found herself entertaining a thought that had come to her in the early mornings when she lay awake in her bed. She asked herself what she would do if Jim proposed marriage to her. The idea, most of the time, was absurd; they did not know one another well enough and so it was unlikely. Also, she thought that she should do everything possible not to encourage him to ask, since she would not be able to say anything in reply except refuse him.

She could not stop herself from wondering, however, what would happen if she were to write to Tony to say that their marriage was a mistake. How easy would it be to divorce someone? Could she possibly tell Jim what she had done such a short while earlier in Brooklyn? The only divorced people anyone in the town knew were Elizabeth Taylor and perhaps some other film stars. It might be possible to explain to Jim how she had come to be married, but he was someone who had never lived outside the town. His innocence and his politeness, both of which made him nice to be with, would actually be, she thought, limitations, especially if something as unheard of and out of the question, as far from his experience as divorce, were raised. The best thing to do, she thought, was to put the whole thing out of her mind, but it was hard now, as the ceremony went on, not to dream about herself being there at the altar and her brothers home for the wedding and her mother knowing that Eilis would be living in a nice house just a few streets from her.

When she came back from receiving communion, Eilis tried to pray and found herself actually answering the question that she was about to ask in her prayers. The answer was that there was no answer, that nothing she could do would be right. She pictured Tony and Jim opposite each other, or meeting each other, each of them smiling, warm, friendly, easygoing, Jim less eager than Tony, less funny, less curious, but more self-contained and more sure of his own place in the world. And she thought of her mother now beside her in the church, the devastation and shock of Rose's death having been softened somewhat by Eilis's return. And she saw all three of them-Tony, Jim, her mother-as figures whom she could only damage, as innocent people surrounded by light and clarity, and circling around them was herself, dark, uncertain.

She would have done anything then, as Nancy and George walked down the aisle together, to join the side of sweetness, certainty and innocence, knowing she could begin her life without feeling that she had done something foolish and hurtful. No matter what she decided, she thought, there would not be a way to avoid the consequences of what she had done, or what she might do now. It occurred to her, as she walked down the aisle with Jim and her mother and joined the well-wishers outside the church, where the weather had brightened, that she was sure that she did not love Tony now. He seemed part of a dream from which she had woken with considerable force some time before, and in this waking time his presence, once so solid, lacked any substance or form; it was merely a shadow at the edge of every moment of the day and night.

As they posed for photographs outside the cathedral, the sun came out fully and many onlookers came to view the bride and bridegroom getting ready to travel to Wexford in a large hired car decorated with ribbons.

At the wedding breakfast, Eilis spoke to Jim Farrell on one side and on the other a brother of George's who had come home from England for the wedding. She was watched fondly and carefully by her mother. It struck her as almost funny that every time her mother put a morsel of food into her mouth she looked over to check that Eilis was still there and Jim Farrell firmly to her right and that they seemed to be having an agreeable time. George Sheridan's mother, she saw, looked like an elderly duchess who had been left with nothing except a large hat, some old jewellery and her immense dignity.

Later, after the speeches, when photographs were being taken of the bride and bridegroom, and then the bride with her family and the bridegroom with his, Eilis's mother sought her out and whispered to her that she had found a lift to Enniscorthy for herself and the two O'Brien girls. Her mother's tone was nearly too pleased and conspiratorial. Eilis realized that Jim Farrell would believe that her mother had engineered this and she realized also that there was nothing she could do to let him know that she had not been involved. As she and Jim were watching the car going off, and cheering the newly married couple, they were approached by Nancy 's mother, who was in a state of happiness, aided, Eilis thought, by many glasses of sherry and some wine and champagne.

"So, Jim," she said, "I'm not the only one who says that the next outing we'll all have will be your big day. Nancy will have plenty of advice to give you when she comes home, Eilis."

She began to laugh in a cackling way that Eilis thought was unseemly. Eilis looked around to make sure that no one was paying them any attention. Jim Farrell, she saw, was staring coldly at Mrs. Byrne.

"Little did we think," Mrs. Byrne went on, "that we'd have Nancy in Sheridan 's, and I hear the Farrells are moving out to Glenbrien, Eilis."

The expression on Mrs. Byrne's face was one of sweet insinuation; Eilis wondered if she might make an excuse and simply run towards the ladies' so that she would not have to listen to her any more. But then, she thought, she would be leaving Jim on his own with her.

"Jim and I promised my mother we'd make sure she knows where the car is," Eilis said quickly, pulling Jim by the sleeve of his jacket towards her.

"Oh, Jim and I!" exclaimed Mrs. Byrne, who sounded like a woman from the outskirts of the town making her way home on a Saturday night. "Do you hear her? Jim and I! Oh, it won't be long now and we'll all have a great day out and your mother'll be delighted, Eilis. When she came down with the wedding present the other day she told us she'd be delighted and why wouldn't she be delighted?"

"We have to go, Mrs. Byrne," Eilis said. "Can you excuse us?"

As they walked away Eilis turned towards Jim and narrowed her eyes and shook her head. "Imagine having her as a mother-inlaw!" she said.

It was, she thought, merely a small act of disloyalty, but it would prevent Jim from thinking that she had anything to do with Mrs. Byrne in her present state.

Jim managed a wintry smile. "Can we go?" he asked.

"Yes," she said, "my mother knows exactly where the lift to Enniscorthy is. There is no need for us to stay here any longer." She tried to sound imperious and in control.

They drove out of the car park of the Talbot Hotel and along the quays and then crossed the bridge. Eilis decided that she would put no further thought into what her mother might have said to Mrs. Byrne or, indeed, what Mrs. Byrne herself had said. And if Jim wanted to, and if it helped to explain his silence and the rigid set of his jaw, then he could do so all he pleased. She was determined not to speak until he did and not to do anything to distract him or cheer him up.

As they turned towards Curracloe, he finally spoke. "My mother asked me to let you know that the golf club is going to inaugurate a prize in memory of Rose. It will be given by the lady captain as a special trophy on Lady Captain's Day for the best score by a lady newcomer to the club. Rose, she says, was always really nice to people who were new to the town."

"Yes," Eilis said, "she was always good with new people, that's true."

"Well, they're having a reception to announce the prize next week and my mother thought that you could come to tea with us and then we'd go out to the golf club for the reception."

"That would be very nice," Eilis said. She was about to say that her mother would be pleased when she told her the news but she thought that they had heard enough about her mother for one day.

He parked the car and they walked down towards the strand. Although it was still warm, there was a strong haze, almost a mist, over the sea. They began to walk north towards Ballyconnigar. She felt relaxed with Jim now that they were away from the wedding and happy that he had not mentioned what Mrs. Byrne had said and did not seem to be thinking about it.

Once they had passed Ballyvaloo, they found a place in the dunes where they could sit comfortably. Jim sat down first and then made space for her so that she was resting against him with her back to him. He put his arms around her.

There was no one else on the strand. They looked at the waves crashing gently on the soft sand, remaining for some time without speaking.

"Did you enjoy the wedding?" he asked eventually.

"Yes, I did," she replied.

"So did I," he said. "It's always funny for me seeing everyone's brothers and sisters because I'm an only child. I think it must have been hard for you losing your sister. Today, watching George with his brothers and Nancy with her sisters made me feel strange."

"Was it difficult being an only child?"

"It matters more now, I think," Jim said, "when my parents are getting older and there's just me. But maybe it mattered in other ways. I was never really good at getting on with people. I could talk to customers in the pub and all that, I knew how to do that. But I mean friends. I was never good at making friends. I always felt that people didn't like me, or didn't know what to make of me."

"But surely you have a lot of friends."

"Not really," he said, "and then it was harder when they started having girlfriends. I always found it difficult to talk to girls. Do you remember that night when I met you first?"

"You mean in the Athenaeum."

"Yes," he said. "On the way into the hall that night Alison Prendergast, who I was sort of going out with, broke it off with me. I knew it was coming but she actually did it on the way into the dance. And then George, I knew, really fancied Nancy and she was there. So he could be with her. And then he brought you over and I had seen you in the town and I liked you and you were on your own and you were so nice and friendly. I thought-here we go again. If I ask her to dance I'll be tongue-tied, but I still thought I should. I hated standing there on my own, but I couldn't bring myself to ask you."

"You should have," she said.

"And then when I heard you were gone I thought it was just my luck."

"I remember you that night," she said. "I had the impression you didn't like us, both me and Nancy."

"And then when I heard you were home," he said as though he had not been listening, "and I saw you and you looked so fantastic and I was so down after the whole episode with Nancy 's sister, I thought that I'd do anything to meet you again."

He pulled her closer to him and put his hands on her breasts. She could hear him breathing heavily.

"Can we talk about what you are going to do?" he asked.

"Of course," she replied.

"I mean if you have to go back, then maybe we could get engaged before you go."

"Maybe we can talk about it soon," she said.

"I mean, if I lost you this time, well, I don't know how to put it, but…"

She turned around towards him and they began to kiss and they stayed there until the mist became heavier and the first hints of the night coming down, then they walked back towards the car and drove to Enniscorthy.

A few days later a note came from Jim's mother formally inviting Eilis to tea the following Thursday and telling her about the reception in the golf club to honour Rose, which they could attend afterwards. Eilis showed the letter to her mother and asked her if she would like to go to the reception as well, but her mother said no, it would be too sad for her, and she was happy for Eilis to go with the Farrells and thus represent the family.

It rained all the following weekend. Jim called on the Saturday and they went to Rosslare and had dinner in the evening in the Strand Hotel. As they were lingering over the dessert, she was tempted to tell him everything, to ask him for his help, even his advice. He was, she thought, good, and he was also wise and clever in certain ways, but he was conservative. He liked his position in the town, and it mattered to him that he ran a respectable pub and came from a respectable family. He had never done anything unusual in his life, and, she thought, he never would. His version of himself and the world did not include the possibility of spending time with a married woman and, even worse, a woman who had not told him or anybody else that she was married.

She looked at his kind face in the soft light of the hotel restaurant and decided that she would tell him nothing now. They drove to Enniscorthy. At home as she looked at the letters from Tony stored in the chest of drawers in her bedroom, some of them still unopened, she realized that there would never be a time to tell him. It could not be said; his response to her deception could not be imagined. She would have to go back.

Once the event in the golf club was over, she decided, she would pick a date. For some time now, she had postponed writing to Father Flood, or Miss Fortini, or Mrs. Kehoe, explaining her extended absence. She would write, she determined, over the next few days. She would try not to postpone any further what she had to do. But the prospect of telling her mother the date of her departure and the prospect of saying goodbye to Jim Farrell still filled her with fear, enough for her once more to put both ideas out of her mind. She would think about them soon, she thought, but not now.

On the day before the event at the golf club she had gone alone in the early afternoon to the graveyard to visit Rose's grave again. It had been drizzling and she carried an umbrella. Once she arrived in the graveyard, she noticed that the wind was almost cold, even though it was early July. In this grey, blustery light the graveyard where Rose lay seemed a bare and forlorn place, no trees, nothing much growing, just rows of headstones and paths and underneath all the silence of the dead. Eilis saw names on headstones that she recognized, the parents or grandparents of her friends from school, men and women whom she remembered well, all gone now, held here on the edge of the town. For the moment, most of them were remembered by the living, but it was a memory slowly fading as each season passed.

She stood at Rose's grave and tried to pray or whisper something. She felt sad, she thought, and maybe that was enough-to come here and let Rose's spirit know how much she was missed. But she could not cry or say anything. She stood at the grave for as long as she could and then walked away, feeling the sharpest grief as she was actually leaving the graveyard itself and walking towards Summerhill and the Presentation Convent.

When she reached the corner of Main Street, she decided that she would walk through the town rather than go along the Back Road. Seeing faces, people moving, shops doing business, she thought, might cure her of the gnawing sadness, almost guilt, that she felt about Rose, about not being able to speak properly to her or pray for her.

She passed the cathedral on the opposite side and was making her way towards the Market Square when she heard someone calling her name. When she looked, she saw that Mary, who worked for Miss Kelly, was shouting at her and beckoning to her to cross the road.

"Is there something wrong?" Eilis asked.

"Miss Kelly wants to see you," Mary said. She was almost out of breath and looked frightened. "She says I'm to make sure and bring you back with me now."

"Now?" Eilis asked, laughing.

"Now," Mary repeated.

Miss Kelly was waiting at the door.

"Mary," she said, "we are going upstairs for a minute and if anyone is looking for me, then tell them I'll be down in my own good time."

"Yes, miss."

Miss Kelly opened the entrance to the part of the building where she lived and ushered Eilis in. As Eilis closed the door behind her, Miss Kelly led her up a dark stairway to the living room, which looked onto the street but seemed almost as dark as the stairwell and had, Eilis thought, too much furniture in it. Miss Kelly pointed to a chair covered in newspapers.

"Put those on the floor and sit down," she said.

Miss Kelly sat opposite her on a faded-looking leather armchair.

"So how are you getting on?" she asked.

"Very well, thanks, Miss Kelly."

"So I hear. And I was just thinking about you yesterday and wondering if I would ever see you because I heard from Madge Kehoe in America just yesterday."

"Madge Kehoe?" Eilis asked.

"She'd be Mrs. Kehoe to you but she's a cousin of mine. She was, before she married, a Considine, and my mother, God rest her, was a Considine, and so we are first cousins."

"She never mentioned that," Eilis said.

"Oh, the Considines were always very close," Miss Kelly said. "My mother was the same."

Miss Kelly's tone was almost skittish; it was, Eilis thought, as though she were doing an imitation of herself. Eilis asked herself if it could possibly be true that Miss Kelly was a cousin of Mrs. Kehoe.

"Is that right?" Eilis asked coldly.

"And of course she told me all about you when you arrived first. But then there was no news here and Madge has a policy that she only keeps in touch with you if you keep in touch with her. So what I do is I telephone her about twice a year. I never stay long on the line because of the cost. But it keeps her happy, especially if there is news. And then when you came home, well, that was news and I heard you were never out of Curracloe, and in Courtown with your finery, and then a little bird who happens to be a customer of mine told me that he took a photograph of you all in Cush Gap. He said you made a lovely group."

Miss Kelly seemed to be enjoying herself; Eilis could think of no way of stopping her.

"And so I telephoned Madge with all the news, and about you paying out the wages down in Davis 's."

"Did you, Miss Kelly?"

It was clear to Eilis that Miss Kelly had prepared every word of what she was saying. The idea that the man who had taken the photograph in Cush, a figure Eilis barely remembered and had never seen before, had been in Miss Kelly's shop talking about her and that this news was conveyed to Mrs. Kehoe in Brooklyn suddenly made her afraid.

"And once she had news of her own, then she telephoned back," Miss Kelly said. "So, now."

"And what did she say, Miss Kelly?"

"Oh, I think you know what she said."

"Was it interesting?"

In her tone, Eilis tried to equal Miss Kelly's air of disdain.

"Oh, don't try and fool me!" Miss Kelly said. "You can fool most people, but you can't fool me."

"I am sure I would not like to fool anyone," Eilis said.

"Is that right, Miss Lacey? If that's what your name is now."

"What do you mean?"

"She told me the whole thing. The world, as the man says, is a very small place."

Eilis knew from the gloating expression on Miss Kelly's face that she herself had not been able to disguise her alarm. A shiver went through her as she wondered if Tony had come to see Mrs. Kehoe and told her of their wedding. Instantly, she thought this unlikely. More likely, she reasoned, was that someone in the queue that day in City Hall had recognized her or Tony, or seen their names, and passed the news on to Mrs. Kehoe or one of her cronies.

She stood up. "Is that all you have to say, Miss Kelly?"

"It is, but I'll be phoning Madge again and I'll tell her I met you. How is your mother?"

"She's very well, Miss Kelly."

Eilis was shaking.

"I saw you after that Byrne one's wedding getting into the car with Jim Farrell. Your mother looked well. I hadn't seen her for a while but I thought she looked well."

"She'll be glad to hear that," Eilis said.

"Oh, now, I'm sure," Miss Kelly replied.

"So is that all, Miss Kelly?"

"It is," Miss Kelly said and smiled grimly at her as she stood up. "Except don't forget your umbrella."

On the street, Eilis searched in her handbag and found she had the letter from the shipping company with the number to call to reserve a place on the liner. In the Market Square she stopped at Godfrey's and bought some notepaper and envelopes. She walked along Castle Street and down Castle Hill to the post office. At the desk, she gave them the number she wished to phone and they told her to wait in the kiosk in the corner of the office. When the phone rang, she lifted the receiver and gave her name and details to the shipping company clerk, who found her file and told her that the earliest possible sailing from Cobh to New York was Friday, the day after tomorrow, and he could, if that suited her, reserve a place for her in third class at no extra charge. Once she agreed, he gave her the time of the sailing and the planned date of arrival and she hung up.

Having paid for the phone call, she asked for airmail envelopes. When the clerk found some, she asked for four and went to the small writing booth near the window and wrote four letters. To Father Flood, Mrs. Kehoe and Miss Fortini she simply apologized for her late departure and told them when she would be arriving. To Tony, she said that she loved him and missed him and would be with him, she hoped, by the end of the following week. She gave him the name of the liner and the details she had about the possible time of arrival. She signed her name. And then, having closed the other three envelopes, she read over what she had written to Tony and thought to tear it up and ask for another but decided instead to seal it and hand it in at the desk with the rest.

On the way up Friary Hill she discovered that she had left her umbrella in the post office but did not go back to collect it.

Her mother was in the kitchen, washing up. She turned as Eilis came in.

"I thought after you had left that I should have gone with you. It's a lonely old place, out there."

"The graveyard?" Eilis asked as she sat down at the kitchen table.

"Isn't that where you were?"

"It is, Mammy."

She thought she was going to be able to speak now, but she found that she could not; the words would not come, just a few heavy heaves of breath. Her mother turned around again and looked at her. "Are you all right? Are you upset?"

"Mammy, there's something I should have told you when I came back first but I have to tell you now. I got married in Brooklyn before I came home. I am married. I should have told you the minute I got back."

Her mother reached for a towel and began to wipe her hands. Then she folded the towel carefully and deliberately and moved slowly towards the table.

"Is he American?"

"He is, Mammy. He's from Brooklyn."

Her mother sighed and put her hand out, holding the table as though she needed support. She nodded her head slowly.

"Eily, if you are married, you should be with your husband."

"I know."

Eilis started to cry and put her head down on her arms. As she looked up after a while, still sobbing, she found that her mother had not moved.

"Is he nice, Eily?"

She nodded. "He is," she said.

"If you married him, he'd have to be nice, that's what I think," she said.

Her mother's voice was soft and low and reassuring, but Eilis could see from the look in her eyes how much effort she was putting into saying as little as possible of what she felt.

"I have to go back," Eilis said. "I have to go in the morning."

"And you kept this from me all the time?" her mother said.

"I am sorry, Mammy."

She began to cry again.

"You didn't have to marry him? You weren't in trouble?" her mother asked.

"No."

"And tell me something: if you hadn't married him, would you still be going back?"

"I don't know," Eilis said.

"But you are getting the train in the morning?" her mother said.

"I am, the train to Rosslare and then to Cork."

"I'll go down and get Joe Dempsey to collect you in the morning. I'll ask him to come at eight so you'll be in plenty of time for the train." She stopped for a moment and Eilis noticed a look of great weariness come over her. "And then I'm going to bed because I'm tired and so I won't see you in the morning. So I'll say goodbye now."

"It's still early," Eilis said.

"I'd rather say goodbye now and only once." Her voice had grown determined.

Her mother came towards her, and, as Eilis stood up, she embraced her.

"Eily, you're not to cry. If you made a decision to marry someone, then he'd have to be very nice and kind and very special. I'd say he's all that, is he?"

"He is, Mammy."

"Well, that's a match, then, because you're all of those things as well. And I'll miss you. But he must be missing you too."

Eilis was waiting for her mother to say something else as her mother moved and stood in the doorway. Her mother simply looked at her, however, without saying anything.

"And you'll write to me about him when you get back?" she asked eventually. "You'll tell me all the news?"

"I'll write to you about him as soon as I get back," Eilis said.

"If I say any more, I'll only cry. So I'll go down to Dempsey's and arrange the car for you," her mother said as she walked out of the room in a way that was slow and dignified and deliberate.

Eilis sat quietly in the kitchen. She wondered if her mother had known all along that she had a boyfriend in Brooklyn. The letters Eilis had written to Rose had never been mentioned and yet they must have turned up somewhere. Her mother had gone through Rose's things with such care. She asked herself if her mother had long before prepared what she would say if Eilis announced that she was going back because she had a boyfriend. She almost wished her mother had been angry with her, or had even expressed disappointment. Her response had made Eilis feel that the very last thing in the world she wanted to do now was spend the evening alone packing her suitcases in silence with her mother listening from her bedroom.

At first she thought that she should go to see Jim Farrell now, but then realized that he would be working behind the bar. She tried to imagine going into the pub and finding him there and trying to talk to him, or waiting while he found his father or his mother to take over the bar as she went out with him and told him that she was leaving. She could imagine his hurt, but she was unsure what exactly he would do, whether he would tell her that he would wait while she got a divorce and attempt to convince her to stay, or whether he would demand an explanation from her as to why she had led him on. Seeing him, she thought, would achieve nothing.

She thought of writing a note to say that she had to go back and posting it in the door of his house for him to find either late that night or in the morning. But if he found it that night, he would instantly seek her out. Instead, she decided, she would drop the note in the door the following morning on her way to the railway station. She would simply say that she had to go back and she was sorry and she would write when she arrived in Brooklyn and would explain her reasons.

She heard her mother coming back and walking slowly up the stairs to her room and she thought of following her, of asking her to stay with her while she packed, and talk to her. But there had been something, she thought, so steely and implacable about her mother's insistence that she wanted to say goodbye only once that Eilis knew it would be pointless now to ask for her blessing or whatever it was she wanted from her before she left this house.

In her room, she wrote the note to Jim Farrell, then left it aside; she pulled her suitcase out from under the bed and placed it on the bed and began to fill it with her clothes. She could imagine her mother listening as the wardrobe door was opened and hangers with clothes on them were pulled off the rail. She imagined her mother tensely following her as her footsteps crossed the room. The suitcase was almost full by the time she opened the drawer where she had kept Tony's letters. She took them and slipped them in at the side of the case. She would read the ones she had not opened on her journey across the Atlantic. For a moment, as she held the photographs taken that day in Cush, the one with her and Jim and George and Nancy, and the one of her alone with Jim as they smiled so innocently at the camera, she thought she would tear them up and put them in the bin downstairs. But then she thought better of it and slowly took all her clothes out of the case and placed the two photographs face down safely at the bottom of the case and then covered them over again. Some time in the future, she thought, she would look at them and remember what would soon, she knew now, seem like a strange, hazy dream to her.

She closed the case, carried it downstairs and left it in the hallway. It was still bright outside, and, as she sat at the kitchen table having something to eat, the last rays of the sun came through the window.

A few times over the hours that followed she was tempted to carry up a tray with tea and biscuits or sandwiches to her mother; her mother's door remained closed and there was not a sound from the room. She knew that if she knocked on the door, or opened it, her mother would firmly tell her that she did not want to be disturbed. Later, when she decided to go to bed, Eilis passed the door of Rose's room and thought to enter, to look for the last time at the place where her sister had died, but, although she stopped outside for a second and lowered her eyes in a sort of reverence, she did not open the door.

As she had not drawn the curtains she was woken by the morning light. It was early and there was no sound except for bird-song. She knew that her mother would be awake too, listening for every sound. She moved quietly, carefully, putting on the fresh clothes she had left out for herself, going downstairs to stuff the old clothes with her toiletries into the suitcase. She checked that she had everything-money, her passport, the letter from the shipping company and the note for Jim Farrell. Quietly, she sat in the front parlour to watch out for Joe Dempsey's car.

When it arrived, she made sure she was at the door before he knocked. She put her finger to her lips to indicate that they should not speak. He put the suitcase in the boot of the car as she left her key to the house on the hallstand. As they drove away, she asked him to stop for a moment at Farrell's in Rafter Street, and, when he did so, she dropped the note through the letter box of the hall door.

As the train moved south, following the line of the Slaney, she imagined Jim Farrell's mother coming upstairs with the morning post. Jim would find her note among bills and business letters. She imagined him opening it and wondering what he should do. And at some stage that morning, she thought, he would come to the house in Friary Street and her mother would answer the door and she would stand watching Jim Farrell with her shoulders back bravely and her jaw set hard and a look in her eyes that suggested both an inexpressible sorrow and whatever pride she could muster.

"She has gone back to Brooklyn," her mother would say. And, as the train rolled past Macmine Bridge on its way towards Wexford, Eilis imagined the years ahead, when these words would come to mean less and less to the man who heard them and would come to mean more and more to herself. She almost smiled at the thought of it, then closed her eyes and tried to imagine nothing more.