‘A raffle can pull it in. Keep the prizes within reason. Get a grocer to put up a few bottles for you and a nice big box of chocolates.’
‘It’ll be a break, selling tickets.’
Mrs Sinnott cut her birthday cake and everyone, including O’Shea and Father Hennessey and Mrs Eckdorf, took a piece. O’Shea placed glasses on the table, and the bottle of Gilbey’s port that Riordan’s had sent up, and nuts and fruit and two packs of cards. He helped Mrs Sinnott to an armchair by the range, knowing what to do because every year after the cutting of the cake, and when the port had been opened, it was her custom to move to the armchair. When she was younger she had remained at the table to play rummy, a game that by tradition had come to be played at all the birthdays in the hotel. Now she was content to drink a glass of port by the range: she would doze until the moment came for her visitors to leave her, until Philomena’s hand gently touched her shoulder.
On two other days in the year, in autumn and in December, birthdays were still celebrated in the hotel, but not in the kitchen. Eugene and O’Shea, each on the relevant day, sat down in her room and had tea with her. She gave each of them a pound, which O’Shea had earlier picked up from the bank, with Morrissey’s sixpences and Eugene’s spending money and his own wages.
Eugene poured the port and Mrs Sinnott’s health was drunk. O’Shea had put an extra glass on the table, which Eugene, not bothering to count, had filled as well. From it Mrs Eckdorf now drank. Father Hennessey, who drank also, felt he should be able to say something to the woman in order to make her see that she should not be there. ‘It’s a family occasion,’ he whispered to her. She nodded.
The birthday was the same as all the others that Timothy John remembered, except for the awkwardness caused by the presence of the uninvited guest. His father shuffled together the two packs of cards and then dealt them. Coins of small denomination were placed on the table by all the family, and by Father Hennessey and O’Shea.
As play commenced, there was a silence in the kitchen, except for the sound of the game and the ticking of the clock on the dresser. Red ashes fell silently from the fire in the range. No draught caused a rustle in the paper-chain that stretched from one hook to another, across the length of the huge ceiling. Mrs Sinnott slept. Mrs Eckdorf sat on a chair, far away from the table, near the door. O’Shea’s dog lay at his feet.
Mrs Gregan discarded a ten of spades. Eugene picked up a joker. Philomena remembered a birthday of her own in this kitchen, the year after her mother died, when she was sixteen. O’Shea put a seven of clubs beside a seven of hearts. Mr Gregan had a royal sequence in diamonds. Timothy John thought that if what she’d been implying was that he should be living in the hotel with his father, then she didn’t know what she was talking about. The gum from which his tooth had been taken throbbed steadily. He needed more Disprin, but he couldn’t very well ask for it here. His mother smiled at him, and he could feel her thinking that as soon as they were back in the bungalow she’d insist that he went to bed.
From two different positions Mrs Eckdorf photographed the card-players, working quietly so as not to distract them. Out of the corner of his eye, Father Hennessey noticed her movement, saw also that Eugene was becoming restive. Ten minutes passed before Eugene threw his cards down and stood up.
‘Stop taking those photographs,’ he ordered in a sober voice.
‘Just go on playing,’ murmured Mrs Eckdorf, intent on what she was doing.
‘It’s damn ridiculous,’ Eugene protested angrily.
Philomena glanced at Mrs Sinnott, who continued to sleep undisturbed.
‘It is ridiculous,’ said Mr Gregan.
Father Hennessey rose and went to where Mrs Eckdorf was standing. ‘Please now,’ he said.
She photographed Mrs Sinnott in the armchair by the range, and then Eugene.
‘I’m sorry I upset you,’ she said, smiling slightly at them all. ‘Thank you for being patient.’
Father Hennessey returned slowly to his chair. Mrs Eckdorf, on her way from the kitchen, paused at the door.
‘We concern one another,’ she said. ‘We are all God’s creatures.’
No one present made an effort to reply to this statement, no one denied it.
‘Morrissey,’ said Mrs Eckdorf, ‘and Agnes Quin.’
‘Yes,’ said Father Hennessey, filling the silence.
Mrs Sinnott continued to sleep. The others, with the exception of O’Shea, regarded Mrs Eckdorf in astonishment and with varying degrees of displeasure. Mrs Gregan and Philomena, who had been friendly yesterday, did not seem friendly now. Timothy John looked as though he didn’t care for her. Eugene was still angry. Mr Gregan made an impatient noise. Father Hennessey frowned. Only O’Shea seemed happy.
‘You need look no further,’ said Mrs Eckdorf, ‘than Morrissey and Agnes Quin. We are the victims of other people.’
Mrs Gregan said to herself that she was greatly perplexed. The woman was indeed odd, referring out of the blue to a couple like Morrissey and Agnes Quin, and announcing that you need look no further than them. What did she mean by that? What had Morrissey and Agnes Quin to do with anything, for goodness’ sake?
Mrs Gregan had never met Morrissey, but one day she had met Agnes Quin. She knew that a person called Morrissey came to visit her mother and that the man was an orphan and that Agnes Quin was an orphan. Her mother attracted people like that, being a charitable person. When she had seen Agnes Quin, on the landing outside her mother’s room, she had wondered about her. She had taken her to be a well-dressed tinker or a tinker who was no longer an itinerant but had settled down in regular work or had married. There wasn’t anything out of the way in such a person coming daily to visit her mother, any more than it was unexpected that Morrissey should come and write down prophecies. Her mother’s world was private and always had been. No doubt she paid Agnes Quin a little now and again, and Morrissey too: it did her good, Mrs Gregan had concluded, to think that she was still a help to people.
Such thoughts had more than once passed through Mrs Gregan’s mind concerning Agnes Quin and Morrissey, and thoughts that were not dissimilar had passed through the minds of Philomena and Timothy John. Mrs Gregan had said to Philomena once that she believed Agnes Quin was or had been a tinker, and Philomena, who had also seen Agnes Quin, had been inclined to agree. She, having met Morrissey as well, suggested that he was or had been a tinker too: he was the same kind of person, she said, a down-and-out. Timothy John, who had never seen either Agnes Quin or Morrissey, had come to believe, because of the descriptions of his mother and his aunt, that the couple were or once had been of the itinerant class. With O’Shea, they were the last of her orphans, and there had never been any question within the family that Mrs Sinnott should be deprived of their company because they were not respectable people.
‘Their lives,’ Mrs Eckdorf was saying now. ‘Morrissey, who will one day forgive his enemies. Agnes Quin who might have been a nun. We must know their lives.’
‘Look here, what the heck’s all this about?’ demanded Mr Gregan.
‘And the lives of other people,’ said Mrs Eckdorf, ‘though some may be distasteful to us. The violent life of Hoerschelmann, and Hans-Otto Eckdorf with his falsely bandaged hand. And Doyle the lemonade clerk, and Miss Lambe in a boardinghouse in Wigan. And lives in China and Australia, where Smedley the lecher has travelled after flesh-pots. And the dark lives of Africa. And lives, grey-flannelled, in the United States of America; and lives in Chile, and in India. Do you understand?’ asked Mrs Eckdorf.
‘No,’ said Mr Gregan.
‘Father Hennessey understands.’
Father Hennessey said he did not.
‘I turned away from a bearded face. I put Elsie Timson’s holy book down a lavatory. At St Monica’s School for Girls I sat in innocence, drinking cocoa with Miss Tample until Miss Tample became a monster. My father ran away, my mother was disgraceful. God is in this kitchen,’ cried Mrs Eckdorf. ‘God is revealing Himself through that sleep
ing woman.’
‘Please,’ said Father Hennessey, standing up to meet this careless blasphemy. ‘Please, Mrs Eckdorf.’
‘Even now we should be anointing the feet of persons who are unknown to us, of murderers and those with feet that are diseased. Yet how can we do that without God?’ cried Mrs Eckdorf. ‘How can I look again at the feet of Hoerschelmann unless God is inside me, as He is in that woman there? How could I touch the feet of Smedley, who even now, a naked lecher –’
‘You’re upsetting the women,’ exclaimed Mr Gregan loudly, his chair scraping on the flagstones as he pushed it back. The greyhound whimpered and ran around. They looked at Mrs Sinnott to see if she’d been disturbed, but she still slept.
‘She would bend to anoint the feet of anyone in the world. A man whose feet were eaten up with leprosy would feel the coolness of her fingers. She would anoint the feet of Smedley and Mrs Dargan, though they lay in sin. She would anoint the sores –’
‘Get out of here,’ shouted Eugene, and eyes were again turned to where Mrs Sinnott rested. But Mrs Sinnott did not wake.
‘Can we only forgive, is there nothing else?’ demanded Mrs Eckdorf. ‘Your sister cooks food for her husband, Eugene, and does not know him, nor he her. Does Philomena know her son? That gentle porter lives alone, with failing hopes for company. You push all life away, Eugene: you want no part of life now. When you think, Eugene, do you think that we cannot speak to one another, that there is only forgiveness? It’s easy to talk in the exercise-books: it’s easy to talk to yourself.’
She had read the exercise-books, they individually thought, and their bewilderment increased. O’Shea, who did not share that thought and whose bewilderment did not increase, gazed at Mrs Eckdorf with pleasure.
‘Hoerschelmann might lift a table up and strike the life from one of you. He might come into this room, a stranger, and do that. You would not know him and yet in time you could forgive. You could anoint his feet.’
‘Go away from us,’ ordered Eugene.
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Eckdorf, and left the kitchen, softly closing the door behind her and causing, after she’d gone, a long silence.
They talked about her then, while Mrs Sinnott slept and O’Shea stared at the scattered cards on the table and did not take part in the conversation. They exchanged again the experiences they had with Mrs Eckdorf. Eugene told how he had dreamed on the night before her arrival, and how she had seemed to him when he saw her to be a woman who might belong to a circus. Mrs Gregan told of her arrival, unannounced, at the house in Terenure and how she had said immediately that she was keen to buy the hotel and was endeavouring to discover what the members of the family thought about such a proposition. Philomena told of Mrs Eckdorf’s visit to the bungalow, how she had seemed quite pleasant and interested. Timothy John said that from the first moment he had seen her he had considered her unusual. He did not, since his father was present, enter into detail about the course of her conversation in the Home and Personal Effects Department, but he managed to convey the impression that the conversation had not been normal.
‘She had no intention ever,’ said Mr Gregan, ‘of buying the property.’
Eugene shook his head. A case like that, he pronounced, couldn’t run a tap, let alone an hotel.
‘Is she mad, Father?’ Philomena asked, and Father Hennessey shrugged his shoulders. You could not be sure, he said, whether a woman who spoke in that way was insane or not.
‘Oh, there’s madness there,’ said Mr Gregan knowledgeably. ‘She’s up the chute, Father.’
‘I thought it quite extraordinary,’ his wife said, ‘taking photographs like that.’
‘We all thought that, Enid,’ Mr Gregan reminded her. ‘We were sitting here thinking that. The dark lives of Africa,’ said Mr Gregan and gave a short laugh.
She had called him gentle, O’Shea remembered. She had spoken quietly about the lives of people in China, she had said that he lived in failing hopes, meaning that he had been faithful not to give up. When she spoke, Mr Gregan had said he didn’t understand and Father Hennessey had not understood either. But if she had turned to him and asked him if he understood he would have been able to say that he did. It would be nice for Mrs Sinnott to have photographs of her ninety-second birthday, which was something that Eugene Sinnott could not be expected to appreciate.
‘You are never here,’ O’Shea cried suddenly and with vehemence. ‘You are down in Riordan’s, Mr Sinnott, drinking glasses of sherry. The building could fall down into ruins –’
‘O’Shea, O’Shea,’ murmured Father Hennessey.
‘She stood there yesterday, Father, with a light coming out of her clothes. She stood in the attic with a yellow light –’
‘You told me, O’Shea.’
‘She was sent to this hotel to set it to rights,’
‘No, no, O’Shea,’ said Mr Gregan.
‘It’s too much for you to understand. The Queen of Heaven –’
‘That’ll do now,’ commanded Father Hennessey sharply.
‘Something has happened here,’ insisted O’Shea. ‘She came into the hotel singing a hymn. She came a thousand miles.’
‘Will we get on with the game?’ suggested Eugene.
‘She was glowing in the attic,’ O’Shea cried shrilly. ‘If it was the Queen of Heaven herself you’d say she was a racing tip, Mr Sinnott.’
The cards were dealt again, but O’Shea did not pick up his. They lay before him while the others played, thinking again that the woman who had taken photographs of them and had spoken so oddly had also read their conversations with Mrs Sinnott. She had no right to do that; she had no right to eavesdrop.
‘She’s a case,’ Eugene said, speaking softly so as not to disturb O’Shea in his thoughts.
‘She’ll go without paying the bill,’ warned Mr Gregan.
Eugene shrugged and threw down a three of hearts. Mrs Gregan whispered that no matter what Mrs Eckdorf was or was not, she had upset O’Shea badly.
‘She had no intention ever,’ repeated Mr Gregan, ‘of buying the property.’
The others shook their heads, agreeing easily about that. They all, including Eugene, felt sorry for O’Shea, and they all thought in the same way that it wasn’t at all unusual that a person like O’Shea, who was well-known locally for the fruitfulness of his imagination, should have seen an unbalanced woman as a special figure.
‘She’ll go away,’ said Father Hennessey, and thought as he said it that she might stay for ever, that Mrs Sinnott, who was famous for taking pity on people and still made decisions, might decide that the woman should remain in a room in the hotel. He imagined her voice continuing about people he had never heard of, about all the people in the world, about anointing the feet of murderers. It would not be pleasant to have her around.
With her camera ready, Mrs Eckdorf listened outside the room in which Morrissey had placed Mr Smedley and Mrs Dargan. ‘I didn’t touch your bloody togs,’ Mrs Dargan was protesting, laughing her throaty laugh. Mrs Eckdorf opened the door.
The blind was still drawn, but in his search for his clothes Mr Smedley had put the light on. He stood directly beneath the shaded bulb, his face screwed up in perplexity and anger, his pale body naked. Mrs Dargan, seated on the edge of the bed, was drawing on a stocking.
‘Hi,’ said Mrs Dargan. ‘Your man’s lost his togs.’
‘Get out to hell,’ cried Mr Smedley, covering a part of himself with both hands. ‘Get away with that camera.’
She closed the door and stood with her back against it.
‘Sin has begotten sin,’ said Mrs Eckdorf. She photographed the nakedness of Mr Smedley, and when he advanced upon her she said that if he did not behave himself he would not ever receive his clothes. Mrs Dargan attached the top of the stocking to a suspender, and it occurred to Mrs Eckdorf that there could be few women in the world with legs as massive as the legs of this cheerful creature. She looked at the bare white feet of Mr Smedley and knew that she could not yet anoint the
m. She could not yet bear to touch those feet, or to have them touch her.
‘I want to talk to you both,’ said Mrs Eckdorf.
‘Have you a fag?’ enquired Mrs Dargan.
‘I demand those clothes,’ shouted Mr Smedley. ‘There’s money in them, there’s travellers’ cheques and an air ticket –’
‘Please don’t worry,’ said Mrs Eckdorf.
She gave Mrs Dargan a cigarette and offered one to Mr Smedley, who at first refused and then accepted. She lit both cigarettes and then lit one for herself.
‘I’ll put the police on to you,’ threatened Mr Smedley. ‘Those clothes were stolen. Someone came into this room –’
‘Now listen to me calmly,’ said Mrs Eckdorf. ‘Do you believe in God?’
‘In God? In –’
‘In the existence of a Maker.’
Mr Smedley turned away from the two women. There was a small boil on his back that might have been painful. His shoulders were broad and fleshy and excessively white. Dark hair grew along the line of his spine.
‘I’m a good Catholic,’ said Mrs Dargan.
‘In God?’ said Mrs Eckdorf, and Mr Smedley, still with his back to her, said that he did not believe in God. He mentioned his clothes again. He said he could not stand here in this condition talking to two women about God. He had a plane to catch.
‘An extraordinary thing has happened in this hotel,’ said Mrs Eckdorf. ‘A family has been cleansed of its crimes by a silent woman, through whom God reached out –’
‘I don’t care who reached out,’ shouted Mr Smedley, turning suddenly and glaring at Mrs Eckdorf. ‘It has nothing to do with me what happened in this hotel –’
‘In that you are wrong: we are all to do with one another. We must never seek to escape one another. We are here to know one another.’
‘Will you shut up that rubbish?’ cried Mr Smedley. ‘Are you half-witted? Are you mad? My clothes have been stolen and all you can talk about is God reaching out. I don’t believe in any God.’
‘You have come to mock a woman’s goodness,’ cried Mrs Eckdorf in sudden fury, glaring at Mr Smedley as he had at her. She felt behind her back and removed from the lock of the door its key. Mr Smedley came towards her. She said that if he advanced another inch his clothes would be set on fire. If she was injured in any way, or if commotion broke out in the room, O’Shea the hall-porter had instructions to burn the purloined garments instantly.
Mrs Eckdorf in O'Neill's Hotel Page 23
