Mrs Eckdorf in O'Neill's Hotel

by William Trevor

  3

  Mrs Sinnott, having risen and completed all her preparations for the day, now dressed in black, felt tired as she settled herself into the chair by the window to await the arrival of O’Shea with her breakfast. Around her, on azure wallpaper that had once been richly coloured and now was bleached to nondescript, hung in profusion small religious emblems, the gifts of O’Shea over many years. Among them, and dominant, a painted copy of the Virgin in Baldovinetti’s Annunciation had seventy years ago come from another source, from her mother. In a corner, a dressing-table made to fit the corner held her father’s gifts: an oval looking-glass that was silver-framed, and brushes with silver backs, and a smaller glass that matched the brushes in its silver decoration. Her husband, killed in revolutionary action, looked down from a wooden frame, fair-moustached and stern, with softness in his eyes.

  Mrs Sinnott sighed a little and closed her own eyes, returning for a moment to the past, to orchestras playing silently in the Piazza San Marco. She watched the violinists, feeling through the excitement of their movement a reflection of the reality. People danced among the pigeons. A long way from Thaddeus Street, her father wrote on the back of a cigarette packet. He showed her the message, leaning towards her and smiling.

  She walked on the Zattere al Gesuati. She stood in the Cathedral. That is by Bellini, her mother wrote in the Church of the Glorious St Mary of Friars, her mother who was herself a Venetian. The face of the Child in the Triptych came into her mind and then faded away. She opened her eyes and looked down from her chair into Thaddeus Street. A youth threw open the peeling door of the turf accountant’s, a woman hurried by.

  She looked away, regarding instead the eight piles of red exercise-books that were stacked beneath the deep window-sills on either side of her, against the blue-papered wall. There was a ninth one, a smaller pile that was set a little to one side and contained her conversations with Father Hennessey. Although she understood deaf and dumb language and had once taught it to her husband and to both her children, she no longer employed it. There was an urgency about the sign language that seemed like impatience, and reading other people’s moving lips had never appealed to her. She preferred the written messages because as the pencil moved slowly over the paper she imagined that for her visitors the room was as silent almost as it was for her: she drew her visitors into her tranquillity and she imagined they appreciated it.

  The day before, Father Hennessey had spent an hour with her, showing her what he had written concerning the legend of St Attracta, about which he was composing a book. It was said that this hot-tempered saint had received the veil from St Patrick and had divided the waters of Lough Gara and had harnessed deer with her hair. We must skim the truth from pretty myth, Father Hennessey had written for her benefit alone. There is plenty of truth in St Attracta.

  She took an exercise-book from one of the piles and read, in the handwriting of Morrissey: If you are thinking of a holiday, August is the best. Make no decisions this forenoon. Avoid tension in the p.m. Morrissey had sat there contentedly copying the information out of a magazine. He had opened the magazine at a moment when he imagined she wasn’t noticing him and had placed it close to him, assuming it to be hidden from her view. Venus in Cancer, Morrissey had written. The holiday to suit you best will be one with evening entertainments.

  Her son, her daughter, her grandson, her son’s wife, her daughter’s husband, her priest, her last three orphans: all her visitors were there in the red exercise-books, and their lives were continuing now in their different ways. The troubles and mistakes that were reflected in the pages of the exercise-books were haunting again those whom they possessed, for her visitors, like everyone else, had lives in which there was, with all the rest, failure and sorrow and regret. She thought of them one by one, and imagined them beginning a new day, struggling against the difficulties of existence, which she no longer was required to do.

  ‘Dinner in the diner, nothing could be finer,’ cried a voice from the wireless of Mrs Sinnott’s daughter. In her house in Terenure, while O’Shea was entering O’Neill’s Hotel with five herrings, Mrs Gregan was listening to music on her kitchen wireless and washing the dishes from which she and her husband had eaten their breakfast. She was thinking of the Society of St Vincent de Paul, a charity for which she did much work. Sums of money ran through her head, a figure that had been recently reached, another figure that must be reached before the end of the year.

  The telephone sounded in the hall and Mrs Gregan turned the wireless off, her wet fingers fumbling on the bakelite knob. The sums of money, the figure reached and the one that had to be reached, disintegrated in her mind. She moved to answer the summons, instinctively knowing it would be from her husband. She saw that he had left his gum-boots by the hallstand, which specifically and repeatedly she had asked him not to do. There was a portion of black pipe-dottel, she saw, on the linoleum she had polished yesterday. ‘Hullo, hullo,’ said his voice on the telephone. Faintly she could hear the clicking of typewriter keys and the murmur of conversation.

  ‘Is that you, Enid?’ he said.

  His breath was heavy on the mouth-piece of the receiver. In her mind she saw his face, the folds of red flesh, the grey hair brushed straight back from his forehead, the spectacles with black frames.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘It’s Desmond here, Enid.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He lowered his voice. ‘I was thinking,’ he said, ‘about the tomatoes.’

  ‘Desmond, I’m busy with the dishes now –’

  ‘Will you go into a butcher’s – can you hear me, Enid?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Will you go into a butcher’s and make arrangements for congealed blood? Ask the cost of a gallon of congealed blood every week as a regular order. Explain it’s for the cultivation of tomatoes and we won’t be requiring it till later on. Enid?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Could you compare the price of a gallon in one place with the price in another? The type of blood is immaterial, tell the man. D’you understand that? It can come from any animal whatsoever, only a pig might be best if he gives you a choice.’

  He had bought a small plot of ground a few miles from where they lived and he had just erected on it two glass-houses in which he proposed to cultivate tomatoes for profit. He had come back one evening and asked her if she’d ever noticed tomatoes laid out in the shops. ‘A full chip when you go by in the morning,’ he’d said, ‘and an empty one when you come home at night.’ The plot of land had been paid for out of capital left to her by her father, as had the shed he had built in the garden and the concreting of the yard. Earlier in her marriage to Mr Gregan she had once or twice protested at his way of appropriating her money, but he had pointed out that it was essential to invest money in a sensible manner rather than to purchase clothes with it, or household luxuries that would wear out quickly. He had a way of speaking about such matters over a period of several weeks, making his point after tea every evening when they sat down by the fire. ‘A garment can let you down,’ he would say. ‘A fur coat taken off the back of some misfortunate animal could be eaten by our friend Master Moth and then where’d you be? Or you’d have it stolen off your arm by some brigand when you were out walking in the Botanic Gardens. You’d be paying out good money on insurance with an expensive garment, whereas a concreted yard requires no insurance whatsoever. Once it’s down it’s in place for ever. A concreted yard is an improvement to any property.’ He would go on until it was time for the News and when the News was over he would continue. She might ask him if he’d mind not sitting by the fire in his socks in case anyone came to the door, but he usually didn’t hear when she referred to his personal habits. He never appeared to notice her anger, or her sarcasm. He went his way, but somehow she found it difficult to go hers.

  He had explained to her once that a brooch she had seen in a shop in Nassau Street would be of little use to her since there would never be an occasion in her life when sh
e could wear it. ‘The insurance on that,’ he had said, ‘would be four pound a year.’ When she questioned that figure he replied that he had been in the insurance business for the full span of his adult life and if he didn’t know what he was talking about it was a queer thing. On another occasion she had bought a little antique chair and when she’d shown it to him he hadn’t said a word. He had waited until she was occupied in the bathroom and then he had lifted it into his car and the next day he returned it to the dealer from whom she had bought it. The wrangle over whether or not this man should repay the full amount of money went on for four months, with letters piling up on the mantelpiece and a nightly report from Mr Gregan about the difficulty he was experiencing. ‘You made a terrible boob over that,’ he said to her. ‘The old chair wasn’t worth twopence, Enid.’ On the day he received the full amount from the antique dealer he said all was well that ended well, except that he was nineteen shillings down due to expenditure on postage stamps. He took off his shoes and cleaned the mud from them with the poker, while she sat there asking him not to.

  ‘Any type of stuff from a slaughterhouse,’ he said on the telephone, ‘and you could collect it once a week when you’re out on your shopping.’

  She didn’t reply. She remembered him saying to her, thirty years ago, that she had the nicest hands he’d ever seen on a woman. He had suddenly put his lips on her lips one night in Chapelizod. ‘There was never a woman like you,’ he said.

  ‘Are you listening to me, Enid?’

  The day before she had purchased the ingredients for a Basque omelette, a recipe she’d been planning to attempt for some time. She had turned on the wireless in her kitchen and had sliced a green pepper, which she then fried in pork fat. She had chopped other peppers, crushed garlic, and diced ham. She had simmered the mixture, waiting until she heard his key in the door before beating the eggs. He shouted out at once, complaining that he’d telephoned several times and hadn’t received an answer. ‘I was out buying peppers and garlic,’ she said. ‘I have a delicious dish for you.’ But when later she placed the piperade before her husband he poked at it with his fork and said he’d rather have a couple of pieces of fried bread with marmalade on them. ‘Taste it,’ she urged. ‘It’s called the Piperade du Pays Basque. It’s one of the great dishes of the world.’ But he had replied that he’d rather not taste stuff like that. Was she trying to poison him? he asked with a rolling laugh, pushing the plate away and again mentioning fried bread. Later he talked about the plans he had for the cultivation of tomatoes. There was first-class profit in tomatoes, he said, as witness the financial standing of certain greengrocers.

  ‘Are you all right?’ his voice demanded on the telephone. ‘What’s troubling you?’

  She wanted to say that he’d left his gum-boots by the hall-stand and a piece of filth on the clean floor. She wanted to say that she made simple requests of him and he took no notice. She wanted to remind him that those same hands now were being ordered to carry pailfuls of animal’s blood about the streets of Dublin.

  ‘Desmond,’ she said.

  There was a silence from him. In the background a man laughed, cups rattled on saucers. She might go on for ever, she thought, remembering things, looking at him and listening to his voice. He had gone to sleep once, four years ago, with his pipe carelessly thrown down on a little table that had belonged to an aunt of hers. The hot bowl had left a mark on the surface, causing her to complain more bitterly than before. She recalled the occasion vividly because it was one of the few times he had appeared to notice that she was upset. ‘Leave it to Bobs,’ he had said, and when later she was out on St Vincent de Paul work he had attempted to remove the mark by scratching at it with a screwdriver.

  ‘Desmond,’ she said again.

  ‘Are you there? Did you take in what I said, Enid?’

  ‘Desmond, d’you remember the time your pipe burnt the table?’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘You went to sleep and your pipe burnt a mark at the table. Four years ago.’

  ‘I can hardly hear you.’

  ‘You understood that I was upset. Desmond, I’m upset now.’ ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I’m upset by things, Desmond.’

  The palm of her hand, gripping the receiver, was warm with sweat. She could feel her mouth trembling as she spoke. She would cry, she thought. In a moment she would become hysterical.

  ‘What’s eating you?’ her husband said.

  ‘You understood that time, Desmond. I’m upset because you don’t listen to me when I ask you not to sit in your socks. I’m upset –’

  ‘Is it the time of the month?’

  ‘Oh God, haven’t I told you?’ she cried. ‘Haven’t I told you every day for the past six weeks that I’ve got to a certain stage in a woman’s life? I’ve told you I’d be touchy. All women are touchy now. I keep seeing you, Desmond, in my mind’s eye. I keep knowing the next thing you’re going to say. Desmond?’

  ‘Look, I have to get back to the desk –’

  ‘I was washing the dishes and the wireless was on. I was going through figures in my head and the next thing was the telephone rang. I knew it’d be you, Desmond. When you were talking I thought of the time you put up the garden shed and the time you said a concreted yard was there for ever, and the day you took the chair back. D’you remember in Chapelizod when you said I had the nicest hands you’d ever seen? You’re asking me to carry buckets of blood, Desmond. You’re telling me to go into a butcher’s –’

  ‘I can’t hear a damn word you’re saying. Are you sick, girl?’

  In the hall she shook her head. She held back her sobs. His voice questioned her again, and she said again that she was upset. She said she was fifty-one years of age and had borne no children. She said that for some reason she couldn’t bear the thought of his growing tomatoes in his field. She said that for some reason she couldn’t bear the thought of seeing him on his bicycle.

  ‘Enid –’

  ‘The car never leaves the garage, Desmond. I thought we’d go out –’

  ‘Can you hear me, Enid? If you’re feeling under par why don’t you go and get yourself a bottle of stout? There’s nothing to beat a half pint of stout drunk slowly and leisurely –’

  ‘You left your gum-boots by the hallstand and a piece of filth on the clean floor.’

  She put the receiver down, knowing he would be glad of that, knowing that he wouldn’t ring up again to make sure she was all right. A few weeks after she’d left the hotel they had stood in the hall of his mother’s house, smiling at one another, with the day of their wedding established in their minds. She wept as she stood now, thinking of the dishes in the sink, not understanding anything.

  At his desk, in his private glass-partitioned office of the Home and Personal Effects Department, Mr Gregan went over the order of events. He had left his house, bidding her good-bye. She had been at that moment in perfectly good form, having cooked the breakfast. He had mounted his cycle and made the journey to Westmoreland Street in record time. In the large outer office he had noted the absence of his nephew, Timothy John, and on enquiry had been reminded that his nephew that morning was paying a visit to a dentist. While taking off his coat he had made a mental note to have a word with his nephew about that. He had attended to a number of enquiries and complaints, he had dictated three letters. He had sent the girl off to type them and then, suddenly remembering that he’d read about slaughterhouse blood as a tip-top fertilizer for tomatoes, he had telephoned through to his wife.

  It was an extraordinary thing, he reflected, that she had told him all of a sudden that she had borne no children. She could hardly imagine he was unaware of that. Completely out of the blue she’d told him she was touchy, adding that she was fifty-one years of age and that the car never left the garage. Relighting his pipe, Mr Gregan frowned. Never in their whole married life had they quarrelled. Never once had they stood opposite one another shouting abuse and insults, as a reading of the law reports sugge
sted other couples did. Through hard work he had risen to a certain position in the insurance company, he had supplied the house they lived in with comforts and conveniences. Other couples attacked one another, not just with words but with household property and with their fists: he had never shown signs of violence, or indeed of ill-temper, he had never used to her words or implications that were slanderous. And yet all of a sudden, without warning or stated reason, she was going on about his gum-boots. Any man could forget to put a pair of gum-boots in the correct place, just as any man might leave a pipe on an old table that was in poor condition anyway. She’d made a fuss right enough at the time, but hadn’t he repaired the damage as soon as she drew his attention to it?

  Was she blaming him because she had borne no children? Was she suggesting in some peculiar way that he hadn’t been capable of causing children to be born to her? For a moment, and in amazement, he saw his wife in her mother’s room in the hotel, looking through the conversations he had had over a period with Mrs Sinnott. Slowly he shook his head: she would not do that, nor would Mrs Sinnott ever permit such a thing in her presence. Privacy was privacy, it would be like listening at a door.

  He dismissed the thought completely, but his mind, having arrived in the room of his mother-in-law, lingered there. He had first visited her on his own only a few years ago, to borrow money for an artificial pond he was hoping to sink in the garden. He had sat with her, scribbling out a chattering conversation until quite unexpectedly he had said to himself that the old woman was lonely. The family visited her, as did one or two waifs and strays, but he felt as he sat there that somehow she appreciated more than he’d ever have guessed this visit from another person. I’ll drop in again, he had written.

  It was easy to get away during the day when affairs were quiet in the department. ‘I’m sorry we couldn’t give you grandchildren, he had written, and from that moment he had written about nothing else except the longing he had, and had always had, for children of his own. He wrote of the years going by and the disappointment growing. He wrote of the house as it might have been, with other people in it, growing up and going to school. He wrote about his own childhood, telling her in detail of his life at that time and the things he had done. She had always been interested, she had always been anxious to learn more. It was a subject he felt he could not broach with his wife, since he felt that their failure in this way was something that should not ever be mentioned between them. Nor was it something he could talk about to a casual acquaintance or a colleague in the office: it was easier with an old woman in a quiet room, and it was easier not having actually to speak the words.