The family sat as they had sat around the birthday table, and the events in the past that had so interested Mrs Eckdorf seemed in no way to concern them. Timothy John was not aware of the circumstance of his conception. Mrs Gregan, although at other times she recalled the occasion, did not recall it now. She had behaved badly that night, and often, when she saw her brother in the kitchen, she hoped he forgave her. Philomena did not think now what sometimes she did think: that she had been the culpable one. In the hotel, before their marriage, Eugene had occasionally sought her out to talk to her and embrace her, and when he had come to her room that night she had not turned him away. She had felt an excitement when she saw him standing there; she had opened the door a little more.
On this Sunday morning Eugene did not remember the occasion either. Long since, he had lived the shame out of his life: he had married the girl at his mother’s request, he had witnessed the marriage becoming impossible. Hate would have grown as the child grew, which was what his mother recognized when she admitted her mistake. He felt sorry when Philomena’s terror came back to him now, but to have felt that sorrow every day of his life would have been too much for either. of them to bear.
The past was tied away. Philomena was a mother, Eugene’s sister was another man’s wife, Eugene was the inheritor of an hotel he had no interest in. He lived on money accumulated in the past because he preferred to do that rather than have the hotel full of people: he liked an unexacting life.
‘Well, she’ll hardly trouble us again,’ remarked Mrs Gregan.
Philomena agreed, shaking her head. At a time like this in particular, you couldn’t put up with a woman who perplexed you.
‘I was telling Eugene,’ said Mr Gregan, ‘of this one I read about. She used to call at houses with a case full of bathing-costumes. For all we know, it could be the same offender.’
Timothy John displayed an interest, and his uncle said you always had to be careful about who you let into a house. With an hotel it was different, but with a private house you could land yourself in trouble. He drew attention to the embarrassment a saleswoman of bathing-costumes could cause to house-holders by imagining, or pretending to imagine, that she was a member of the family. You had to be very careful.
When they had drunk their tea, they each took their leave of Mrs Sinnott. The exercise-books would now be destroyed. She would remain in each of their memories differently, and she would fade with varying degrees of swiftness. Their conversations with her had been ordinary, only charged with strangeness because she had never learned to read their lips and because she had never imposed her own language on them. She had made her visitors enter her silent world, which now, as each of them regarded her face, seemed only a little more silent than it had been. They prayed for her soul, they wished her well.
Morrissey, who had that morning left the hotel before it was known that Mrs Sinnott had died, was in an ice-cream parlour in O’Connell Street, reading a newspaper he had found in a litter-bin. He had noticed people looking at his bruised face with curiosity rather than with pity or concern. A gang of youths who had been occupying the tables around him had openly referred to his condition, shouting the names of known pugilists, as if to imply that they were in the presence of just such a champion. They had sat with butts of cigarettes in their mouths, at the same time drinking ice-cream sodas through straws. That was the youth of the country, Morrissey thought, on the way home from Mass on a Sunday morning: what kind of a future could any country have with types like that? He watched them leave the ice-cream parlour, pushing their way roughly through the tables, shouting and laughing. Men had gone to their graves so that these fellows could live in idleness and comfort. ‘Wouldn’t it sicken you?’ he remarked to an elderly woman who was sitting at a table next to his. The woman made a non-committal gesture, and when he continued in his castigation she picked up her cup of coffee and moved to a more distant table.
With the newspaper spread out before him, he reflected that Agnes Quin would soon become tired of wiping floors in a convent: one night she would be again there in a doorway and he would welcome her back, not reminding her that she had omitted to say good-bye to him. She was trash, as he had always thought, a woman who would hire her body and had no consideration for anyone. He bet himself a penny that within three months she’d be hearing the call of the pavements and wouldn’t have the strength to resist it.
Morrissey sat for two hours, until a waitress approached him and asked him if he required anything else. In order to pass a further period of time, he asked the price of various items that the ice-cream parlour offered. The waitress handed him a menu.
‘I was in a train crash,’ he said, pointing at the cuts and bruises on his face. ‘Did you read about it?’ He put the menu on the table without opening it. Hooligans had damaged the rails outside Bray, he said, causing a loss of life.
‘D’you want more?’
He’d had nothing so far, he reminded the waitress. He enquired the cost of a cup of tea.
‘You had tea already, mister.’
Morrissey shook his head, and when the waitress pointed at the empty cup in front of him he claimed that its contents had been drunk by someone else. The waitress argued, and so did he.
‘How could you know what I had,’ he demanded, ‘since you’ve only this minute come on duty? D’you deny you’ve this minute come on duty?’
‘The other girl told me –’
‘The other girl was talking through her hairpins. D’you deny that you just came up those stairs from the basement?’
‘You had a cup of tea two hours ago.’
He shook his head. He’d been up all night, he reminded the waitress, attending to the injured in a train crash. He’d carried stretchers with dead people on them. He’d telephoned for a priest and two doctors. He’d put legs in splints and cleared out cuts that would turn your stomach. After the ordeal he had gone straight to first Mass and then he’d walked about the streets, trying to forget it. He had entered the ice-cream parlour in order to rest his bones, and the next thing was he was being accused of consuming tea that someone else had consumed. He stood up. He said he was leaving behind the newspaper he’d been reading, so that the waitress could read it herself, at her leisure. She protested again: he told her he’d report her to the tourist authorities for inhospitality. He left the ice-cream parlour, hearing the voice of the waitress calling after him and another voice advising her to let him go.
He walked through light rain, considering how he might obtain some money. On O’Connell Bridge he saw the pimpled soldier with whom a few days before he had attempted to be friendly. He was standing with two girls, having his photograph taken by a street photographer. A second soldier was also in the picture, a red-haired youth whose countenance was affected in the same way as his companion’s. Morrissey increased his speed, fearing that now, encouraged in the presence of his friends, the soldier he’d been with might seek to extract some kind of revenge for the firm words he’d addressed to him. They were great cowards, he reflected, these soldiers; they always had to have a companion or two before they’d dare to start anything. Imagine females having their photographs taken with cannon-fodder like that.
Morrissey passed into D’Olier Street and round by the railings of Trinity College, until he found himself in Grafton Street. He followed a well-dressed man and woman, and when they paused outside Switzer’s to survey the goods in the windows he approached them. He’d been in a rail crash, he said, and had spent the night attending to those who had been more seriously damaged than himself. He apologized for his clothes and the battered condition of his face. The man and the woman, who were foreigners and did not fully understand what he was saying, smiled and nodded at him. ‘Rail crash?’ the woman said. He fell into step with them as they walked on from Switzer’s. He gestured again at his clothes and his face, deprecating them: he was a lung specialist, he said: hooligans had derailed a train.
Morrissey remained in the company of these people
while they walked the length of Grafton Street. As he stood with them at the corner of Stephen’s Green he said:
‘Since you’re strangers in the city, would we have a drink together? I’d like to stand you a drink. A drink,’ he repeated, making a drinking motion to his lips. ‘Me buy.’
The man and the woman, who had told him that they came from Greece, politely declined.
‘Drink,’ repeated Morrissey. He pointed at himself. ‘Me pay. You strangers.’
‘That is kind,’ the woman said.
‘This way,’ said Morrissey.
He led the way into a bar and sat the Greek couple down at a table. They held a brief discussion in their own language, deciding what drinks they would have.
‘We like Scotch whisky,’ the woman said at last, smiling lavishly. The man smiled also. ‘It is kind,’ the woman said.
‘You can’t beat the best Scotch,’ said Morrissey.
He went to the bar and ordered large measures of whisky. He carried the three glasses to where he had left the Greeks. He drank his quickly. Then, with a show of embarrassment, he began to pat his clothes in search of a wallet. He ran his hands into his trouser pockets and took from one of them the key to O’Neill’s Hotel, which was his only possession that Mr Smedley had overlooked. He injected his face with a look of horror. In the confusion of the rail crash, he said, his money had become lost. He’d had some change which he must have used up, buying cups of tea for the casualties. His wallet had clearly slipped from his pocket.
The woman nudged her husband, who quickly produced a pound. He would pay for the drinks, he haltingly offered. Morrissey shook his head. He took the pound from the man’s hand. He returned to the bar and ordered further whisky for the Greeks and for himself. He drank his own while he stood there. His friend was paying for everything, he said to the barman. In a mirror which stretched the length of the bar he noted that the eyes of the Greeks were not upon him. With the pound-note warm in his hand, he slipped away.
He returned to the O’Connell Street area, his eyes sharply on the look-out for whatever he might profit by. At two o’clock he bought a plate of chips in a café, at half-past three he successfully negotiated an entry to a cinema without paying the admission charge. He enjoyed a programme which consisted of two famed feature films, Diabolical Dr F and The Pit and the Pendulum. ‘Isn’t it great entertainment?’ he remarked to a child seated next to him. ‘Great,’ agreed the child. During the interval the child, in the company of other children, ate ice-cream and sweets. ‘D’you like sweets?’ he asked them. They replied that they did, and he said that he liked sweets too. They offered him a toffee with nuts in it, which he savoured contentedly for as long as he could make it last. He bought an ice-cream, paying for it with a two-shilling piece. ‘I gave you a half-crown,’ he protested to the girl. ‘I had only the half-crown on me.’ Suspiciously, she handed him an extra sixpence. He thanked her politely. ‘You could have this for threepence,’ he offered the children when he returned to his seat. He held up the tub of ice-cream, mentioning that the saving involved was 50 per cent. The children agreed to the purchase. He’d been in a train accident, he told them, which was why he was looking so battered.
Afterwards, as he exercised himself on the streets, he was watchful again. Men coming from a hurling match wore coloured favours in their lapels, a few carried more, elaborate insignia, some wore paper caps. They were provincial men, Morrissey considered as he examined their faces: from experience he knew that they often had little money to spare but were willing, for a time at least, to engage in conversation. He walked to the central bus station, where a number of these men were waiting to travel to their homes in the country. He talked to one who was on his own, who told him that later that night he would cycle nineteen miles from where the bus dropped him. In reply Morrissey said that he was in a terrible way, his wallet having been stolen by hooligans. He drew attention to the condition of his face. The man gave him sixpence. Some of these provincial men, he considered, shouldn’t be allowed out.
He laughed to himself as he loitered about the Quays, imagining the barman approaching the Greeks and demanding the price of six double whiskies. He laughed, but he felt as well that something would happen to cancel that moment of good fortune; silver clouds, in the experience of Morrissey, tended to have dirty linings. He tapped on the window of a parked car and when the window was wound down he asked the man within if he was in need of a female. The man looked at him in silence, at length enquiring if the female referred to was Morrissey’s mother. Morrissey shook his head: he had never known his mother, he said, having been reared in an institution. While he was still speaking, the man spat through the open window and drove away.
Late that evening Morrissey learnt that Mrs Sinnott had died, and he thought at once that this was the fact that cancelled his good luck with the Greeks. It seemed to him that the death of the old woman had been traded for two drinks of Scotch whisky and a pound; and the only consolation he could discover was that there would be no need now to obtain new books of prophecies. In the Excelsior Bar he reflected that an era of his life, which had commenced with Miss Lambe, had come to a conclusion. He considered that fact and, as if to emphasize it, Eugene Sinnott approached him and upbraided him for his misuse of O’Neill’s Hotel. He withdrew the permission that had made the hall of the hotel a nightly resting place for Morrissey and he demanded the return of the key which he knew Morrissey possessed.
‘You took a key out of my pocket and had another one cut,’ Eugene said, ‘so that you could get into the hotel at any hour of the night. Hand it up now.’
At first Morrissey denied ‘possession of this key: he always went to the hotel, he said, before O’Shea closed the door at nine o’clock, unless he happened to be with Eugene, in which case he entered the hotel with him. He’d often helped Eugene up the stairs, he reminded him, when Eugene was incapable.
‘You’re a bloody liar,’ replied Eugene, his hand still held out for the key, which in the end Morrissey gave him.
‘I’m sorry about your mother,’ he said, but Eugene Sinnott said that he could do without his sympathy.
So that was finished too. He’d return to the hotel tonight with Eugene when Eugene was beyond noticing. He’d spend a last night there, and he’d leave in the morning with his shaving things. As he sat alone in a corner of the pink bar, he knew that, apart from this severance, his future would continue as the past had continued. For a matter of minutes he had indulged in a small dream in the presence of the mad woman, before returning to reality with a floor-cloth on his forehead. Now, he’d find alternative accommodation and he would exist as best he could, wending his way through a world of untrustworthy human beings. After a little time it might be that Eugene Sinnott would be so far taken over by drink that he wouldn’t be so mean in himself. After a little time O’Shea might die and he could move in himself to keep Eugene company. As long as the hotel stood in Thaddeus Street and as long as Eugene Sinnott continued to disintegrate there was hope that something good might happen. O’Shea was a much older man than himself: if O’Shea died when he was in the middle of his sixties, and if Eugene Sinnott remained living for a further five years, there would be a favourable chance of getting back into the hotel. In that case he’d have five years of a permanent home before another change happened. It was possible even that O’Shea, being upset by the passing of the old woman, would die sooner, maybe during the coming winter or in the spring. That could give him a run of up to twelve years, provided Eugene Sinnott himself didn’t die. He and Eugene could be good companions to one another in the hotel, even if there were differences between them, even if Eugene was inhuman.
It was a question of waiting, of hanging about for something to happen, which was an activity that Morrissey was well used to. In the meantime, he’d go to her funeral and accept it when the family looked down their noses at him. He had a right to see the last of a woman who’d given him sixpence a day and had never insulted him: he was sorr
y she was dead.
He crouched over an inch of stout in a glass, waiting for Eugene Sinnott to get into a state in which he didn’t know what was happening. It was typical that as soon as a kindly woman died her son should lose the last vestiges of humanity. He had never taken coins from the pockets of Eugene Sinnott before, but there was no reason why he shouldn’t remove a good few tonight. He wondered what they’d done with the spider, and he resolved to see if it was still in her room. He didn’t want Eugene Sinnott’s wife or Gregan’s wife going about the town with a spider that wasn’t meant for them. He’d get hold of it himself and he’d throw it into the river, or maybe sell it to a child or a poor person.
After ten o’clock Mass on Monday, August 12th, the funeral of Mrs Sinnott left the Pro-Cathedral for the cemetery in which, three days before, Mrs Eckdorf had relaxed among the stones.
By the grave, Eugene Sinnott, neatly clothed, stood beside his sister. Philomena stood by her son. Mr Gregan stood alone.
O’Shea, feeling uncomfortable in clothes that were not his uniform, wept without restraint, while not far away Morrissey and Agnes Quin stood among the crowd of people who had known Mrs Sinnott in her lifetime. Eddie Trump was there with Mr Riordan’s daughter, and Keogh the grocer, and people from far beyond Thaddeus Street, people who had read of the death in the newspapers and had made a point of attending. The Society of St Vincent de Paul was represented, as were the Dominican Sisters, the Order of Malta, and various trading concerns. For the intentions of all these people Holy Mass would in time be offered, which was something that Mrs Sinnott had long since requested.
Sunlight spread from behind a cloud; the wreaths were almost gay. I’ll miss her in her window, Keogh from the grocery thought, and Eddie Trump’s wife remembered her father telling her that Mrs Sinnott had been in her girlhood a lovely thing, made lovelier, he’d said, because of her quiet disability.
She will look down and see, said O’Shea to himself; I will carry out all her wishes. I will see to the needs of her son, I will stand by O’Neill’s Hotel no matter what it becomes or how much deeper it sinks. I betrayed her in her last days, saying she should go to the nuns. I will absolve my betrayal. I will suffer if she sends me that.
Mrs Eckdorf in O'Neill's Hotel Page 27
