Two Lives

10

On Sundays, having exchanged what news there was over a cup of tea at Culleen, Mary Louise usually began her journey back to the town at about a quarter to five, her spirits drooping as the journey progressed. But one March afternoon in 1957 she turned off the road that led to the town and cycled aimlessly, exploring a neighbourhood she did not know well. She chose a different direction the following week and when, eventually, all the ways became familiar to her she returned repeatedly to a favourite one. She was ironically reminded of the Sunday walks of her courtship, the bicycle left in a gateway, the crossroads where she and Elmer turned to the right, the woods they passed through, the humped bridge. It seemed like a lifetime ago, as deep in the past as the first day she attended Miss Mullover’s schoolroom. Whenever she crossed the humped bridge on her bicycle she reflected again, each time with greater bitterness, that someone might have warned her. Why had it been only Letty? And why had Letty made her concern sound like envy?

One Sunday, having ridden further than usual, she found herself at the head of a grassy avenue. Rusty iron gates, set in a spacious curve of railings that long ago had lost all signs of paint, seemed as though they had been flung back with a gesture in some other generation, remaining so to support a jungle of brambles, and ivy branches as thick as an arm. From the road Mary Louise could see the stark white house to which the avenue led, the modest property of her Aunt Emmeline. Only once before had she been here, when she and Letty were entrusted with a gift: a pound of the butter their mother used to make. The butter was later sent to the house regularly, but after that single occasion the task of delivering it became James’s because his sisters had complained so about a mile-long hill up which they’d had to push their bicycles. As she stared down the avenue, Mary Louise found herself recalling that her Aunt Emmeline’s only child – the cousin with whom, for a while at school, she had imagined she was in love – had been able to attend the wedding service in spite of his invalid state. If his condition had worsened she’d probably have heard. Robert his name was.

Mary Louise turned away, pedalling back the way she’d come, but had hardly gone more than a few yards when a car, thick with dust, rounded the bend she was approaching. The horn was sounded, her Aunt Emmeline waved, and then the car drew up. Feeling stupid and caught out, cross because she should have avoided this neighbourhood, Mary Louise dismounted. She knew she’d gone red in the face, and hoped it would be assumed that she was simply out of breath.

‘Heavens above!’ her aunt exclaimed, winding down the car window. ‘Are you visiting us, Mary Louise?’

She shook her head. She tried to think of an excuse, but none would come. There was no reason in the world why she should be here on a Sunday evening. She said the first thing that came into her head.

‘I wondered how Robert was.’

‘You’ve been to see him?’

‘No, no. I just wondered –’

‘Robert’s not bad at all these days. Come on down, dear. He’d love to see you.’

The head – shaggy-haired, the skin of the forehead reddened by exposure to the weather, as the cheeks below it were – was withdrawn. The car moved forward, hesitated, then turned in wildly to the entrance, and advanced at speed on the avenue. Mary Louise rode after it.

Robert – a wiry, gangling child with mischievous eyes – was now a pale young man, and the mischief in his eyes had turned into what seemed like amusement. He wore glasses, which he had not in the past; but his spare, bony frame reminded Mary Louise of the child he’d been. A shock of dark hair kept falling over his forehead; an adult’s smile hovered on his lips.

‘Heavens above!’ he exclaimed, exactly as his mother had. ‘Mary Louise!’

He sat by a fire in a large untidy room. Tables and armchairs were covered with drawings of winter trees, and papers with scribbles in green ink on them, and books. In a window alcove battalions of toy soldiers were engaged in warfare. Fishing-rods and nets were a muddle in a corner. Glass doors led to a conservatory where a vine grew.

The time Mary Louise and Letty had cycled over with the butter they had not been invited to penetrate further into this house than the kitchen: all she saw now was strange to her. But she had often heard the house talked about, usually in the same breath as her Aunt Emmeline’s husband, who had died before she was born. Her mother’s sister had married money, it was said, a statement invariably followed by the reminder that the money hadn’t lasted because the man she married was a gambler. ‘Charm to burn,’ Mr Dallon used to say, and – unlike the money – the charm had lasted to the end. Mary Louise never knew what it was her uncle had died of, and had sometimes wondered if it was the same affliction that Robert suffered from.

‘I was out looking for primroses,’ she lied to her cousin in the untidy room, having noticed a few by the side of the avenue. She always went to Culleen on a Sunday, she added, but today she’d ridden about a bit, thinking to pick spring flowers.

Becoming fuller as he listened, her cousin’s smile straightened the line of his lips, which otherwise were on a slant. He didn’t seem interested in the reasons for her presence.

‘I met Aunt Emmeline,’ she doggedly added.

‘Does marriage suit you, Mary Louise?’

She replied that she was used to it by now. The words came scuttling out: she hadn’t meant to answer the question quite like that, and realized he knew she was being evasive.

‘Well, I suppose you would be used to it. What a silly question!’

He took his spectacles off and wiped them on a handkerchief He was wearing brown corduroy trousers and a tweed jacket, and brown brogue shoes. A watch-chain hung from the buttonhole of his left lapel and disappeared into the pocket beneath it. The family rumour was that this watch had been returned from a soft-hearted pawnbroker when he heard that Robert’s father had died without leaving much behind.

‘D’you serve in that shop?’

‘Part of the day I serve there.’

‘I often wondered.’

Her Aunt Emmeline brought in tea. She placed a tray on a small table which she cleared of books and papers, and pulled the table closer to the fire. A dog had followed her, a Kerry Blue.

‘We don’t often have a visitor,’ her aunt said, and Mary Louise could see that she was pleased, delighted even. She eked out a living selling apples and grapes, and the vegetables she grew. The pair of them wouldn’t have survived, Mary Louise had heard her father say, were it not for the apples and the grapes.

‘D’you remember you and Tessa Enright putting worms in that girl’s desk?’ Robert said. ‘Who was that girl?’

‘Possy Luke.’

‘She screeched like she’d been bitten.’

‘Poor Possy! She was afraid of worms.’

Their schooldays were talked about, and her aunt asked after Mary Louise’s family. She’d heard about Letty going out with the vet. She knew him; she said he was likeable.

‘How’s James getting on?’ Robert asked.

‘James is fine.’

This appeared to be true. Her brother didn’t complain as much as he used to; he didn’t fly off the handle so easily. For the first time in his life he seemed to be aware that he was the farm’s inheritor, that the work he did was for himself. This transformation had come about since Mary Louise’s marriage, and had intensified since Letty had begun to go out with the vet.

‘And how are the Quarrys?’ her aunt inquired.

They, too, were fine, Mary Louise replied.

‘Well, that’s good.’

‘I mustn’t stay long.’

‘Oh, don’t be in a hurry, dear. We don’t see much of you.’

Robert laughed. ‘We don’t see her at all.’

She told them how the bicycle ride, and the long hill, had years ago been too much for Letty and herself, how it had jaded them, which was why James had been given the task of delivering the weekly gift of butter. She thought she’d better say that, in case offence had ever been taken.

‘That’s why we know James better,’ her aunt said.

‘He used to play bagatelle with me,’ Robert said. ‘He loved bagatelle.’

‘He plays cards with the Edderys now.’

They laughed. But she wondered if she should have mentioned cards in view of the stories about the gambling that had left her aunt and her cousin penurious. Again she felt warmth creeping into her cheeks, and hoped they wouldn’t notice.

‘Stay and talk to Robert for a little,’ her aunt begged. The soft plea in her tone had an edge of anxiety to it. She rose as she spoke and poured them each another cup of tea. Then she went away, the Kerry Blue ambling sleepily after her.

‘She thinks I don’t see people,’ Robert said when the door closed behind her. ‘Which of course is true.’

‘What do you do all day, Robert?’

‘I come downstairs to this room. I’m very fond of this room. I light the fire when it’s chilly. We have breakfast together in the kitchen. The rest of the day depends on all sorts of things.’

She remembered his being driven to school by his mother when everyone else either walked or cycled. She had always associated him with his mother, that weather-chapped face behind the steering-wheel. She never saw her aunt in the town these days, and she wondered where the shopping was done. She had passed a general store and a petrol pump a couple of miles back. It would be there, she guessed.

‘A quiet life,’ her cousin said.

‘Yes.’

The crooked smile expanded and straightened. He was watching her: all the time he was talking she could feel him watching her.

‘I don’t think I’d have been much good at anything noisier.’

She smiled in turn, not knowing whether to deny that, deciding not to. He said:

‘I used to want to be an auctioneer when I was at Miss Mullover’s. I fancied myself shouting the odds. Can you believe it? I really did.’

‘I can’t see you an auctioneer, Robert.’

‘Useless I’d have been.’

‘I wanted to work in Dodd’s. It seemed like paradise.’

‘You got the next best thing.’

‘I thought of Quarry’s too.’

‘And is it paradise, Mary Louise?’

‘Oh, all that was just a childish thing.’

He laughed, still watching her. His eyes were brown, but very dark, nearly black when they lost their luminosity. His glasses, tortoiseshell-rimmed, perfectly round, suited him.

‘Come and look at another childish thing,’ he said.

He pushed himself out of his armchair and led her to the table in the window where the soldiers were displayed. It was the double battle of the Aisne and Champagne, he said.

‘General Nivelle’s plan was to break through the German line between Vailly and Reims. This cluster of German armies was under the command of the Crown Prince himself.’

He pointed to where the German line had held, between Vendresse and La Ville aux Bois. Elsewhere it had been pushed firmly back. Mary Louise wondered which war was being fought, and for what purpose.

‘The Germans mustered a good counter-attack, but even so the French pressed on, breaking through the Chemin des Dames.’

Arrows with neatly printed names indicated all that. Some of the soldiers were lying down. These were the dead, he said.

She plucked up courage. ‘Which war was this?’

‘The one before last. The double battle took place in the spring of 1917.’

She followed him back to the fire. She began to say again that she must go, but already he was explaining that if the Russians hadn’t been preoccupied with their revolution it would have been a different story. She wanted to tell him that in Miss Mullover’s history lessons she’d been fascinated by Jeanne d’Arc. Shyness held her back again.

‘In the end it was the Germans who emerged victorious from the Aisne and Champagne encounter. I’m sorry: this is boring.’

‘No. No, it isn’t.’

‘I was explaining how I spend the day because you asked. I play with soldiers. And read. I read a very great deal.’

Mary Louise was not much of a one for reading herself. As well as Picturegoer, Letty bought Model Housekeeping, and there used to be the Girl’s Friend years ago, when she and Letty were younger. In the farmhouse there was a bookcase on the landing. Mary Louise had read The Garden of Allah and Greenery Street; at school they’d read Lorna Doone. She had never even looked at the titles of the books in the attics of the Quarrys’ house.

‘When it isn’t winter,’ her cousin said, ‘I do things in the vegetable beds. Sometimes I wander down to the stream. There’s a heron on that stream.’

‘I’ve never seen a heron.’

‘You could see one here, Mary Louise.’

He smiled again, and all of a sudden she wanted him to know that once she’d thought herself to be in love with him. She didn’t know why she had that urge, and of course it couldn’t be realized. But she thought it would be nice if he knew that being an invalid didn’t make him pathetic. He probably did know, she thought then: he seemed extraordinarily happy with the limited life he led.

‘It’s been nice seeing you again,’ was what she said, and before she left the room she promised to return.

‘It would be good of you,’ his mother said in the kitchen. ‘You’ve no idea how much your visit delighted him.’

Mary Louise wanted it to be a secret. She didn’t want it known at Culleen, and certainly not in the Quarrys’ house, that she had spent an hour with her invalid cousin. She almost asked her aunt if they might keep this afternoon as something among the three of them, but she could not find the words. Then it occurred to her that her mother and her aunt were nowadays not often in touch; sometimes a whole year went by. And since her aunt no longer shopped in the town there seemed little likelihood of anything slipping out in conversation there.

As she rode swiftly on the grassy avenue, she tried to remember what being in love with her cousin had felt like. Had it really been much the same, less potent even, than her feelings for the cinema images of James Stewart? For almost twelve years, since she was twelve herself, she had not devoted more than an ordinary, passing thought to the boy who’d been unable to go on attending school, even though he’d been driven in a car. Unfortunate, she had considered him, leaving it at that.

That Sunday evening it was easier in the dining-room when Mary Louise took her usual place between her husband and Matilda. Elmer helped himself to the egg salad Rose had prepared, asking questions about the farm, and vaguely responding to the answers.

‘I hear your sister’s chummed up with Dennehy,’ Matilda said.

‘I think so.’

‘Funny, that.’

The silence that usually followed this favourite comment of Matilda’s did so again. Elmer said eventually:

‘Is that the vet from Ennistane crossroads?’

Rose affirmed this. Dennehy’s father was the publican at Ennistane, she added.

‘Does your mother mind?’ Matilda asked.

‘Mind?’

‘A person like Dennehy.’

‘She didn’t say she minded.’

‘RC of course?’ Elmer always cut lettuce and tomato up very fine, and mashed a hard-boiled egg. Having done so now, he reached out for salad cream.

‘Oh, yes,’ Rose said.

‘They’re not without means, the Dennehys.’ Matilda nodded more than once, to lend significance to this. ‘Perhaps there’s that.’

She spoke lightly, as if she sought to rid her statement of its implication, or to suggest that if the words were examined carefully it would be found that, in spite of the emphasis of her nodding, nothing much was being suggested. Carefully, she scraped butter on to a slice of soda bread. Tidily, she cut the slice in half and then in half again.

‘Even so,’ Rose took up the theme, ‘I’d have thought Mrs Dallon would be concerned.’

Mary Louise looked away. She half-closed her eyes and saw the soldiers on the table, the little printed arrows, the line of cannon. The uniforms were exactly as they’d been in reality, her cousin had explained, every detail right. She wondered where they’d come from. In a poverty-stricken household the wealth of colour seemed quite out of place.

‘Rough,’ Rose said, the word appearing to be thrown out at random, attached to nothing.

Matilda nodded, and again there was a silence. Elmer passed his cup for more tea. Rose poured it. Matilda added milk.

She would go again next Sunday. She would spend no more than ten minutes at Culleen and then ride quickly on. This time she’d find the courage to ask her aunt if it could be a secret. She’d give a reason, she’d think of something during the week.

‘We need to order gimp,’ Elmer was saying. ‘And ticking.’

On Sundays he went through the stock. He had a method, he’d told Mary Louise on one of their pre-marriage walks. Every Sunday morning he took a different line and checked the supply in stock: haberdashery one week, velvets and velveteens the next, chintzes, satins and silks, then hats and dresses, then overcoats, suits, all menswear, socks and braces. On Sunday evenings he went through the books, minutely comparing the entries with last week’s. It wasn’t necessary, any more than it was necessary to keep a record of the particular garments that were repeatedly rejected when sent out on approval. But all this kind of thing interested him. All this was part of trading.

‘I bet a shilling he’ll be in this week,’ Matilda said, referring to the traveller from whom gimp and ticking were ordered. ‘He’s due since February.’

Mary Louise wondered if there’d be a different battle on the table the next time. Would there be two different sides, the uniforms different, the words on the arrows printed in a different language? She imagined her cousin in the vegetable garden that kept his mother and him going. She saw him bent over a bed in the sunshine, weeding between rows of lettuce. How strange his solitary life must be! And how strange for her aunt to have married money that was not there! Was what they implied about Letty true? Was she going out with the vet in the same way as she herself had gone out with Elmer Quarry? Would Letty marry him and sometimes in the night reach out for him, seeking his physical warmth? Or would all that be a different kind of thing for Letty?

‘There’s a couple of those travellers getting slack,’ Elmer said.

She and her cousin had nothing in common; pushed away into a corner, this realization had remained there ever since he’d talked about the battle in France. Reading was what he liked; sometimes when he said something she didn’t understand it. He’d be bored if she kept turning up on Sundays; you could see he liked to be alone in spite of what his mother said.

‘Surprising your mother could accept Dennehy’s roughness,’ Rose said. ‘Surprising, that.’