The Story of Lucy Gault

3

One day, not long after she first came, the keeper said to him, ‘I’ll instruct you how to sharpen the razors.’

The breakfast dishes were on the tables at the time, knives and forks across them, all the knives blunted with a file, the tin mugs with dregs of tea in them. His turn it was to gather up what there was, piling everything on to the tray and passing it through the hatch, waiting there until it came back, while the keeper put other things in the cupboards – the salt and pepper, any cutlery that would not have been used, the sugar dishes. Matthew Quirke the keeper was that morning. He had his coat off, bands on his shirtsleeves, his cap on the chest by the door. No one else was there.

‘A privilege,’ Mr Quirke said. ‘The razors.’

No one was allowed near the razors only Matthew Quirke himself. It was he who shaved the men; since Eugene Costello had kept a razor by him and they found him the next morning, it was Mr Quirke who shaved the men, a rule made then.

‘How’s that then?’ a voice called out from the other side of the hatch, hands pushing back the tray, the spills wiped from it. MacInchey’s hands they were; you’d know the voice.

‘You understand me?’ the keeper said. ‘You know what I’m saying to you?’ Mr Quirke let what he said stay where it was, not pressing it. ‘Ah, you do, you do,’ he said, squeezing out a cloth into a basin of water. Matthew Quirke would take a glance at you and know was he understood or not. ‘There’s not another man I’d trust with the razors,’ he said. South Tipperary he came from, set for the priesthood only something went wrong. ‘Brush down that table now,’ he said. ‘Leave the long one to me and then we’ll go out the back.’

The shed that had black-painted windows was across the big yard with the drain in the middle. There were two padlocks on it, one high, one low. Inside there was a light to put on.

The door closed behind them, a bolt shot into place. The light was a bulb hanging down over the workbench. The keeper unrolled a bundle in green baize and lifted out the razors, then oiled the sharpening stone.

‘Isn’t it a grand thing she comes by?’ he said.

The first razor went into the vice for a speck of rust to be rubbed off with sandpaper, then the edge was passed over the stone, wiped with a rag before the strop was pulled taut on the hook it hung from.

‘You’d get the way of it,’ the keeper said. ‘Isn’t it grand, though?’ he said.

You didn’t have to answer. Matthew Quirke knew you wouldn’t. The new keeper who came instead of Mr Sweeney didn’t get it at first, not until Briscoe told him there was a man who didn’t want to speak.

‘Ah it is, it is,’ Mr Quirke said.

Myley Keogh’s bar was on the road back that day, a jug of water on the counter. ‘That’s a great cycle you’re after getting off,’ the woman said, and the only thing was you couldn’t ask for a sup from the jug and the woman’d be waiting. No person would be fit to ask for water after seeing the house the way it was and people living in it. No person’d be fit to speak at all.

‘It’s coming up good,’ the keeper said. ‘Continue with the sandpaper a while yet.’

When it was shining in the light he said to stop. ‘You have a friend in her all right,’ he said. ‘Sure, isn’t it that that matters at the heel of the hunt?’

Mr Quirke handed him more sandpaper. He tightened the vice on the next razor he took from the baize. There was more rust on this one than on the last, Mr Quirke said. ‘Don’t be in a hurry with it.’

You wouldn’t want to be in a hurry the way the days were. Any day at all, its hours would go by without haste. You’d take a line from that. No need for hurry.

‘That’s good, that’s good,’ Mr Quirke said. He was whistling, soft, under his breath. He was whistling ‘Danny Boy’ and then he sang. The razor had gone dark wherever it had been kept, but it could be made shiny again, Mr Quirke said, easy enough. By the time they’d finished with it, it would be better than new from the factory.

For an hour and then longer the work continued in the little shed. There was a calendar hung up, a picture of a mountainside on it, trees felled and lying down, the days laid out on it. At the beginning and in the middle of a month she always came, and when you woke up in the morning you’d know. You wouldn’t know what day it was, only that it was the one when she came. It wouldn’t be today.

‘We’ve made a job of that,’ the keeper said.

He folded the baize around the first of the sharpened blades and then around another one. He held them there with a rubber band around the baize.

‘Would you think of a little bird-box?’ he said. ‘You put it on to a tree trunk and the robins would nest inside.’

He drew it out on a piece of ply-board. He showed how you’d cut the wood, two sides with a slant, the piece for the back taller than the front, a hinge marked where you’d lift open the lid and look in. The measurements were written down in red pencil on the ply-board. 9 x 4 the back, 6¾ x 4 the front. 5X4 and 4X4 were the lid and the bottom, 8 x 4 x 6 ¾ the sides. ‘Would you think of it for her?’ Mr Quirke said.

The bell went for twelve o’clock. ‘We’ll shut up shop,’ Mr Quirke said, propping up the ply-board against the ledge of a window-sill. ‘Wouldn’t it be something for you to be thinking about?’ he said in the yard, and again in the passageway. ‘When she’d win with the dice wouldn’t you give her a prize one time?’

In the hall the men had gathered for the Angelus prayer. Mr Quirke was in charge this morning and he went forward to the platform. Father Quirke he’d be now if he’d gone for the priesthood, giving out his orders on a Sunday, everything different for him.

Feet shuffled when the prayer was over; there was talking again and someone shouting out and then someone else. You’d have it wrapped up ready, made the way Mr Quirke would instruct you. She’d throw a six and go up and then she’d throw a four and she’d be home. You’d give it to her and she’d say what it was. She’d say it for you, like she always did.