O’Shea moved suddenly, causing the greyhound to give a little jump. He led the way from the kitchen, across the hall and out into Thaddeus Street. Rapidly he crossed the street and then strode on. He rang the bell at the door of Father Hennessey’s house.
‘Another good day,’ a woman who was passing by on the pavement said to him. He nodded his head.
‘You could not be unhappy on a day like that,’ said the woman.
The evening was warm, although by now the sunlight slanted less powerfully over Thaddeus Street. Soon the shadows would lengthen dramatically in an amber light: the weather had been predictable for more than a week.
‘Is Father Hennessey in?’ O’Shea enquired of the priest’s housekeeper. There was a smell of polish and mulligatawny soup. Brown flowers gleamed from the linoleum. On a table there was a painted statue of the Virgin, on the faded wallpaper a red light burned beneath the Holy Child.
‘Come on up,’ commanded the housekeeper. Her eyes were on the greyhound as she spoke, but she did not say that the dog should wait in Thaddeus Street. She had said that once about another dog, and Father Hennessey had been angry.
‘Is there anything wrong?’ Father Hennessey asked, turning his head as O’Shea entered the room. He was seated at his bureau, and when O’Shea replied that nothing was actually wrong in the sense that something should urgently be set right, the priest requested that he be allowed to finish what he was writing.
‘Do of course, Father,’ O’Shea urged, considering it decent of Father Hennessey to seek permission of an hotel-porter.
‘It’s a lovely evening,’ murmured the priest as he wrote. ‘Well now?’ He turned to face his visitor.
‘A person has arrived who wants to buy the hotel, Father.’
Father Hennessey, who had been winking at the dog, straightened his body too hurriedly. He hit his leg with the palm of his hand, annoyed by the pain that had occurred there. ‘Buy it?’ he said. ‘O’Neill’s?’
‘A woman from Germany, Father. A Mrs Eckdorf. I asked her, Father.’
Father Hennessey turned his back. He went to the window and separated the lace curtains. Across Thaddeus Street he could just perceive the form of Mrs Sinnott sitting at her window. With his back still to O’Shea, he said that Mrs Sinnott would not sell her hotel.
‘I find it difficult to care for her, Father, these days. You said to me once that a time would come when we’d have to let her go to the nuns.’
‘I don’t understand you, O’Shea.’
‘She wants the hotel brought back to what it was, Father. ‘That’s in her heart all the time. How can I do it, with Eugene Sinnott dropping cigarette-butts all over the place and Agnes Quin and Morrissey –.’
‘Who is this woman that’s come?’
‘She’s staying in O’Neill’s. She came this morning, Father. I am only thinking of Mrs Sinnott’s wishes, Father.’
Father Hennessey shook his head. He looked at O’Shea’s face, trying to fathom something from it. O’Shea had been known to let his imagination run away with him before: in his longing for the hotel to clamber to its feet again he was capable of fantasy.
‘You are good and faithful, O’Shea. Bless you now.’
‘Father –’
‘I think you’ve made a little error.’
Father Hennessey patted the greyhound and winked again at it, which was something he had discovered the dog liked.
‘She stood in the attic, Father, and a light came out of her. There was a glow on her white clothes. It was a sign to me, Father, of the way things must be. She has gone out now to speak to the rest of the family.’
‘Was she lighting a cigarette in the attic?’
‘It wasn’t that, Father.’
‘I don’t understand you at all, O’Shea.’
‘Our Lady sent down that little light so that I could see it. The Queen of Heaven –’
‘O’Shea –’
‘I thought it out ever since.’
‘What you’re saying is silly, O’Shea.’
‘Mrs Sinnott has reached the time when she must go into expert care, Father. Eugene Sinnott must be sent into a home for drunks. It is the Queen of Heaven interpreting the wishes in Mrs Sinnott’s heart.’
‘The imagination is God-given, O’Shea. It is a powerful possession –’
‘Mrs Sinnott is too kind to order her son into a home for drunks, she’s too kind to order out Agnes Quin and Morrissey. Our Lady looked down and saw the way things are. She took charge of everything, so that the wishes in Mrs Sinnott’s heart could be fulfilled, so that the hotel of her father could rise like a phoenix-bird. People could come again, Father, and go up and down the stairs the way they used to, men from the provincial breweries, actors and families, businessmen from the North. Morrissey passed water on a flower-bed I made. It’s a sin to do that, Father, on top of living flowers. Agnes Quin had an elderly man with her –’
‘O’Shea –’
‘There’s girls at Mass uncovered, Father. Is that a sin, Father?’
Father Hennessey shook his head. He would prefer, he said, that the girls wore hats or scarves as a sign of respect, but in his view the failure to cover the head on the part of girls and women did not constitute a sin. O’Shea, staring at the open books on the bureau, did not acknowledge the opinion.
‘There’s disorder everywhere,’ he said. ‘I heard Mrs Eckdorf say that today. There’s disorder on the streets and in the hotel.’
‘We mustn’t worry too much –’
‘The nuns are more expert than myself when it comes to looking after an elderly woman who has neither hearing nor speech. I can’t manage her, Father, which is the thing that’s being recognized.’
Thinking to arrest his visitor’s progress from reality, Father Hennessey said:
‘You would miss Mrs Sinnott, O’Shea.’
‘Mrs Eckdorf is there now.’
‘You would miss Mrs Sinnott.’
O’Shea shook his head. Mrs Sinnott was a good woman, he said, and he reminded Father Hennessey of the time there had been a fly on a window-pane and she had asked him to open the window for it. She was a good woman, he said, who had never harmed a living creature, but the time had now come when the disorder must cease, since that was her own wish as well as the wish of God.
‘Go back and rest yourself,’ advised Father Hennessey. He was about to add that O’Shea should say a prayer or two, but in the circumstances he decided against it, thinking that he’d say the necessary prayers himself. ‘Rest yourself, O’Shea, and try to remember that the imagination is a powerful possession.’
The words sounded weak: unhelpful and inadequate in the circumstances. Father Hennessey sighed.
‘I came to tell you,’ said O’Shea, ‘so that you could speak to the nuns about what has happened, so that they’d be prepared for her. After her birthday. I wouldn’t say before. And Eugene Sinnott –’
‘We’ll think about it all, O’Shea.’
‘I believe we are meant to act fast.’
‘We mustn’t be hasty. I think there’s no hurry.’
‘I thought I would tell you so that you could do something at once. I spent the afternoon thinking, ever since I was up in the attic with her.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Father Hennessey said. ‘Go along now, like a good man. Good-bye, O’Shea.’
He has got out of touch, O’Shea thought: the greater world is passing that old man by while he sits there writing about the saints in Thaddeus Street.
‘Thank you,’ he said to the housekeeper, who was waiting at the foot of the stairs. She opened the hall-door so that he and the greyhound might pass from the house. ‘It has been good weather,’ she said.
‘We are lucky,’ said O’Shea.
He walked away, along a street that was now coloured by the setting of the sun. It was a bad thing that Father Hennessey had allowed himself to get so badly out of touch with the way the world was. They needed a younger man, who would have more of a grasp of
things and would act more quickly. Father Hennessey, in his old-fashioned way, found it hard to understand that someone would come from Germany to buy property, yet that was the way the world was going.
He entered the hall of the hotel and stood for a moment, as earlier he had stood in the kitchen. Why had he felt as he had about the bed she was to sleep in? Why had he left her bedroom to look down upon her as she slept in the hall?
A bell rattled in the kitchen passage, which meant that Mrs Sinnott had worked her bell-pull. Slowly O’Shea mounted the stairs.
He stood beside her while she rose from her chair, refusing his aid. She left the room and when she returned she nodded her thanks at him: she liked to have him there, near by, in case she fell on the journey. He had cared for her lovingly, he thought, but the nuns would care for her with expertise, which was more important in the circumstances.
Outside her room, he stood in meditation again. He watched the nuns as they aided her downstairs, two kinds nuns who listened to what she was saying. Father Hennessey waited in the hall, nodding at her when she handed him a note that said she knew it was the best thing for everyone. She passed from the hotel in the care of the nuns, with Father Hennessey falling in behind them, making of it a little procession. In Thaddeus Street people stood to say good-bye to her and handed the nuns bunches of flowers. Keogh the grocer was there with a honeycomb. Eddie Trump stood by in his Sunday suit. ‘There has been no loyalty like the loyalty of O’Shea,’ someone fondly remarked. Mrs Sinnott stepped into a motor-car, and when the car had drawn off all the people turned to O’Shea and nodded their heads at him. A few shook hands with him. The old fish-seller was there, and the child who hadn’t any teeth, both of them looking serious. The fish-seller put into his hands a pair of trout, the child gave him sweets. The people went away and O’Shea still waited, standing on the steps of the hotel with Father Hennessey. ‘Have you sent for the police?’ the old priest said to him, and he nodded, not trusting himself to speak. While they watched, two officers came marching up Thaddeus Street. ‘Mr O’Shea?’ one said, and he said yes, and he and Father Hennessey stood aside so that the officers might enter the building. They emerged a moment later with Morrissey and Agnes Quin under close arrest. They led them down Thaddeus Street, the captives aware that they must accept their fate and showing no resistance or resentment. ‘They will be grateful to you, O’Shea,’ remarked Father Hennessey. ‘They will begin a new life when they’re released.’ Eugene Sinnott left Riordan’s public house and took up a position in the middle of Thaddeus Street. He walked towards the hotel, while people from the windows of shops and houses observed him. ‘They are seeing that for the last time,’ said Father Hennessey, and when Eugene Sinnott was close enough he told him that Mrs Sinnott, having been placed in the care of nuns, had agreed that the hotel should be immediately disposed of, since her son was incapable of taking charge of it. It was proposed that Eugene Sinnott should enter the care of those who had expertise in the business of handling drunks. O’Shea was a loyal man, Father Hennessey said, but he could not be expected to continue to attend to a person whose only wish was to fill the capacity of his body with alcoholic refreshment. O’Shea had done his duty over the years: the time had now come for his reward, which had been sent down by Our Lady, Queen of Heaven. Eugene Sinnott bowed his head. He turned to O’Shea and apologized. ‘God bless you,’ he said. The three men entered the hotel and beheld on the stairs the figure of Mrs Eckdorf. ‘Come to me,’ she said, and O’Shea stepped shyly forward and stood there by her side. ‘It will be a fine hotel again,’ she said. ‘People will talk about the service and the comfort.’
The greyhound licked O’Shea’s hand on the landing outside Mrs Sinnott’s door. Together they made their way down the stairs and entered the room he had prepared for the guest. Her white luggage was neatly stacked. A shaft of waning sunlight touched the thorns of Christ in a sacred picture above the mantelpiece. The greyhound’s small head jerked to one side as the eyes within it followed O’Shea’s slow motion towards the bed. He felt beneath the covers for the hot-water jars, murmuring aloud that they had lost a little of their heat and would again require to be filled.
11
Twilight dwindled into darkness. In a dance-hall Mr Smedley unhappily danced. People on the city streets moved less swiftly than they had in the busier time of the day. Couples in love strolled the dry suburban roads, or window-gazed, or sat in cinemas or lounge-bars. By a bus-shelter in Rathfarnham a hospital nurse waited in vain for the man she was to meet, and in the end wept. On her way home from a meeting of the Society of St Vincent de Paul, Mrs Gregan saw her standing there. She wondered why the girl, unknown to her, was tearful by a bus-shelter and then forgot about her, having other matters to consider. She had not seen her husband on his return from work. She had left him a salad and some brawn she’d specially made, knowing that he liked brawn. Her spirits had risen during the course of the day: she wanted to apologize to him now for being so emotional on the telephone and to tell him about the woman who had called to see her, and to tell him what had been decided at the charity meeting.
‘I need a new pair of gum-boots,’ he remarked as she entered their sitting-room.
He listened then while she told him that a person called Mrs Eckdorf had come to the house that afternoon. She related all that had taken place between them, she raised her voice when he seemed about to sleep in his armchair. She’d given Mrs Eckdorf a recipe for moussaka, she said, and the address of three estate agents, since there was little chance that her mother would be willing to part with her property. She described Mrs Eckdorf’s appearance. She apologized for her touchiness on the telephone, explaining that she was at a certain period of her life, that touchiness often accompanied that time with women.
‘Eckdorf?’ said Mr Gregan.
It was funny her coming like that, she said, and yet she had enjoyed her visit. It had bucked her up a little, a new face on an ordinary afternoon, a breath of fresh air.
‘Eckdorf?’ repeated Mr Gregan. ‘That’s a most peculiar name.’
With a laugh, he suggested that his wife might possibly have imagined the whole thing: why would a woman want to buy a property that wasn’t for sale? And why would she come to see a person who was not the owner of the property?
Mrs Gregan began to feel low again. ‘She ate macaroons,’ she said. ‘She sat there, Desmond, in the chair you’re sitting in.’
‘Eckdorf?’ he said for the third time, and repeated also that it was a most peculiar name.
Mrs Gregan made tea for both of them. While she did so, he shouted from the sitting-room to the kitchen, telling her that new gum-boots would be necessary for work up in the field, especially when the weather worsened. He was silent then, and when she carried in the tea and biscuits he said that he’d been sitting quietly because he’d been thinking about this woman who had called. He asked her if she was certain she hadn’t had a little dream, and when she again assured him she hadn’t he said they’d better telephone through to Philomena to find out what she’d made of this Mrs Eckdorf.
She stood beside him in the hall while he dialled. She should have left him a note about the visitors, he said, and not wait to pass on information like this at a late hour in the evening.
In the bungalow Philomena said that Mrs Eckdorf had called on her also and had called on Timothy John in the office. She had discussed the visitor with Timothy John, who had reported that he’d been completely foxed by her manner and her conversation.
‘Is he there?’ demanded Mr Gregan. ‘Can I speak to the boy if he’s available?’
Timothy John related to his uncle what had taken place in the offices of the insurance company, how Mrs Eckdorf had been hanging around the downstairs hall and had asked for a word with him, how they had ascended the stairs together. He did not repeat what Mrs Eckdorf had said about his father because it would have embarrassed him to repeat any of that: he simply said that Mrs Eckdorf had not made herself clear.
&nb
sp; ‘It’s most peculiar,’ said Mr Gregan. ‘That’s most peculiar, boy.’
In the house in Terenure and in the bungalow the conversation about Mrs Eckdorf continued after the two telephones had been replaced. Mrs Gregan, who had not at the time thought it out-of-the-way that she had had this tea-time caller, frowned over the visit now. Her husband pointed out that it was strange that Mrs Eckdorf had hung about the downstairs hall of the insurance company, waiting for Timothy John instead of going up. ‘I think I must have passed her there,’ Mr Gregan said, ‘and didn’t notice.’ Philomena asked her son what it was that Mrs Eckdorf had said and he repeated that he hadn’t understood a word that came from her. In the house in Terenure and in the bungalow bewilderment increased. Who in their senses, they said to one another, would want O’Neill’s Hotel, tucked away in Thaddeus Street, a house whose day was done? She had frightened Timothy John, but he did not say so. His tooth ached while he listened to his mother’s wondering voice.
Morrissey was far away, but had he been present in the house or in the bungalow he could have quickly explained, producing physical evidence, that what had happened was that a woman from Germany, who had nothing to do with any of them, had succumbed to aberration in their city. He could have displayed the lump on the side of his head that had been inflicted with a black ruler, and could have told of how he had felt another blow and had returned to consciousness to find himself stretched on the floor, receiving attention from a charwoman. The Sinnott family and O’Shea, and himself and Agnes Quin, were all being drawn into a stranger’s lunacy for no reason whatsoever. Morrissey, who by now felt strongly about Mrs Eckdorf, would have reminded them that nothing Mrs Eckdorf had said made sense, that in particular she had talked to him crazily about a ship’s barman.
Having been restored to consciousness by the presence of a wet floorcloth on his forehead, Morrissey had immediately and finally decided that the female with the camera was too far affected to be of any possible use to him. An association with her would clearly lead to death: and was it not typical that the rosy future he had planned – he himself in charge of a mildly unhinged woman who now owned an hotel and was desirous of male visitors – should have evaporated almost as soon as it had appeared? In the bungalow and in the house in Terenure Morrissey would not have mentioned this envisaged future, but he would have mentioned everything else, and he would have asked those present to feel the injuries on his head. As it was, neither Mr Gregan nor his wife, nor Philomena nor her son, said to one another that the explanation of Mrs Eckdorf lay within her own mind and her own life. They did not say that what had happened and was continuing to happen was that an agitated woman, drawn towards them in an eccentric way, had now entered a state of further agitation in which, her distress being what it was, she felt the need to involve people she did not know.
Mrs Eckdorf in O'Neill's Hotel Page 18
