Mr Lynch’s Holiday

17

They could hear the radio on in the kitchen, Aggie’s high-pitched voice singing along, missing every note. There was a lingering smell of bacon in the hallway, though there’d been none at breakfast. She’d set down a plate of eggs, announcing ‘Ash Wednesday’ as she did, and Dermot’s stomach had rumbled a blasphemous response.

The lino was loose on the lodging-house stairs and he cursed as he slipped a step. He turned back to Matty, coming down behind him: ‘How is it you never fall?’

‘I know which one to miss.’

‘Would it hurt them to put in a light bulb?’

‘It’s the third from the top.’

‘Or, God forbid, nail down the lino?’

‘I just step over it.’

‘I don’t know what use he is at all. She may as well run the place by herself.’

‘There’s no point getting aerated.’ Matty opened the front door. ‘You’ll be gone soon enough.’

After mass they walked up to the Vaults with the black smudges still on their foreheads.

‘So, not long now, is it?’

‘No. Three weeks. A gay bachelor no more I’ll be.’

‘You’re the lucky one.’

‘I don’t know,’ replied Dermot, but he smiled as he said it. ‘The honeymoon itinerary keeps expanding. I tell her we’re only there for a week, but her family seem to have made it a point to scatter as widely as they can across the country. She has an aunt in Donegal and a sister in Cork. I’m to meet them all, apparently.’

‘You’ll be kept busy.’

‘I will.’

‘I still say you’re the lucky one.’

‘I am. I know. I am.’

‘She has looks and brains too, so she has.’

Dermot smiled.

‘What?’

‘You make her sound like a racehorse.’

‘I didn’t mean to.’

Matty looked embarrassed and Dermot felt bad for him. ‘No, you’re right. She’s a great girl. I don’t know what she’s doing with me at all.’

Matty grinned. ‘Neither do I.’

‘That’s enough of that. Some of those younger lads chasing her, Brylcreem boys. Flash Harries. They weren’t her style at all.’

‘Showering her with diamonds, were they? Now why would she want that?’

‘I don’t think there were many diamonds. All talk those boys. The patter, you know? She’d have you screaming, the way she sends them up.’

‘Well,’ Matty drained his glass, ‘you’re moving up in the world. Away from the old stamping ground. Soon there’ll be no one left at all.’

He got the bus into town and waited for her in the Kardomah by Snow Hill. He was always five minutes early and she was always five minutes late. He’d say: ‘You’re not a truly late person. There’s a consistency there. Always five minutes. Why don’t you leave five minutes early?’

And she’d say: ‘Why don’t you leave ten minutes late?’

The truth was he liked the wait, the anticipation of her arrival. He’d look out the window and what he saw was a kind of chaos, an abstract pattern of faces and wheels and legs and bags and hats and umbrellas until the moment when it all came together, the split second when she emerged from the crowd and everything snapped into place. The world complete.

There was something dramatic about her entrances. Her hair blown from being on the bike, her face glowing, a slight breathlessness as she swept through the café. He always stood to greet a lady, but with Kathleen it was never courtesy or manners, it was an involuntary response. His legs straightening of their own accord, propelling him up to hold her, to catch her somehow. She kissed him on the cheek and he held her close for a moment, before she pushed him gently away.

‘People are looking.’

‘They should. Good God, we’re a handsome pair.’ He whispered, ‘Can you imagine the children we’ll have? People will weep when they see them.’

She laughed and they sat down.

‘Did you get the train tickets organized?’

‘I did, yes. And the boat. And the hotel for the first night. You’ve nothing to worry about.’

‘I was having these funny thoughts cycling in.’

‘Were they about the hotel? The honeymoon suite? A night of romance and passion?’

‘They were not!’

‘I don’t know that I’m interested, then.’

‘Do you remember Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday?’

‘Was that the one with Bogie?’

‘No. That was Sabrina. Roman Holiday had Gregory Peck. They were in Rome. On holiday.’

‘Oh, I remember!’

‘I was just thinking: imagine if we were going on honeymoon to Rome. Could you imagine that? Wouldn’t it be magical?’

‘We’re going on honeymoon to Ireland, Kathleen. It’s all booked.’

‘I know. I know. And that will be grand. It’ll be great to see everyone. I was just daydreaming. Just the idea of it. Can you imagine being in a place like that?’

Dermot smiled. ‘Well … it would be something, wouldn’t it? The history of the place.’

‘That’s what I was thinking. And the glamour. My God. The people there are so good-looking.’

‘So, day one, what would we do? I’d say we’d go to the Colosseum, what do you reckon?’

‘Oh, Dermot! Ben Hur! Do you remember that? Spartacus! Tony Curtis!’

‘I don’t know that we’d see him.’

‘I can picture you in a toga.’

‘I’m not sure about that.’

‘I think you’d look regal. Imperious. Like Larry Olivier.’

‘More like a Mint Imperial. Anyway, day two, what do you fancy? The Trevi Fountain or the Spanish Steps?’

‘Well, maybe day two we should go and pay our respects to His Holiness.’

‘Oh yes. His Holiness. I was forgetting him. He’d be most put out if we didn’t pay him a visit.’

‘So there’d be the Sistine Chapel and the Basilica.’

‘St Peter’s.’

‘Then we could do the fountain and the Spanish Steps the day after that.’

‘We’d be eating a lot of spaghetti.’

‘And driving around on mopeds.’

The waitress brought their coffees. Kathleen smiled.

‘Ah, well. If we squint, maybe we’ll be able to imagine Thurles as the Villa Borghese Gardens.’

‘You might be better off shutting your eyes altogether.’

‘It’ll be lovely anyway.’

‘It will. We can go to Italy another time.’

She laughed and he looked at her.

‘What? What’s so funny? Maybe we will.’

‘Maybe,’ she said.

‘You sound like you’ve gone off the idea.’

‘We were just joking about, Dermot.’ She reached across and squeezed his hand.

After weeks of rain, it was bright and blustery on the wedding day. Dermot’s older brother Joe came down from Liverpool to be the best man; the bridesmaid’s headdress blew off into a tree during the photos and the priest got Kathleen’s name wrong. Matty wished them well and bought them a gift even though Dermot had told him not to. It was a figurine. A shoeless child sat at a well. A funny thing really. The child’s expression somewhat sad, her eyes large. A faithful puppy nuzzling into her side. It sat on the dresser throughout their marriage, part of the sitting-room scenery, its provenance half-remembered, its strangeness gone.