by Maeve Binchy
Like the idea of designer labels with the word “Pine” on them.
All had added greatly to the shop’s turnover. And the place looked smart and lively. It had been a success for both of them.
Clodagh decided that she would not outrage the sensitivities of Knockglen so for Christmas Day mass she wore a short herringbone tweed coat with a black leather belt. She wore high black boots and a black leather beret pulled down the side of her head. It would have looked really good with big chunky flashy earrings. But for Christmas mass Clodagh showed restraint. She was unaware that her aunt knelt with her head in her hands and asked the Mother of God why a girl so good and helpful as Clodagh should dress like a prostitute.
Sean Walsh knelt stiffly. He had the look of someone who was poised waiting for a blow. He looked rigidly in front of him, lest he be caught gazing around.
Sean had been invited to Christmas lunch at the Hogans’ this year. Other Christmases he had gone home to his own people, a world of which he spoke not at all, in a town which no one could remember because Sean Walsh had never referred to it. But this year he had persuaded Mr. Hogan to stay open late on Christmas Eve and not close at lunchtime, as they had done in other years.
Most people had a few presents still to buy on Christmas Eve, Sean reasoned. And if Hogan’s wasn’t open they could always buy men’s handkerchiefs in Peggy Pine’s, or boxes of cheroots in Birdie Mac’s, or masculine-smelling soaps in Kennedy’s. All those places would now be open to catch the trade. Knockglen was changing fast.
“But you can’t do that,” Mr. Hogan had pleaded. “You’ll miss your bus home.”
“There’s not going to be much of a Christmas there anyway, Mr. Hogan,” Sean had said apologetically, knowing that now an invitation would have to be forthcoming.
Sean was looking forward to sitting at Christmas lunch with the Hogans as if he were a person of status. He had bought a dried flower arrangement for Mrs. Hogan, something that could stand on her table all year, he would say. And a talcum powder called Talc de Coty for Benny. It was 4/11, a medium-range talcum powder, something that would please her, he thought, without embarrassing her by its grandness.
She had been pleasant this morning, smiled at him very affably and said she was glad he was coming to lunch and that they’d see him about one o’clock in Lisbeg.
He had been pleased to be told what time they expected him. He was wondering if he should have gone back with them after mass. It was as well to have it pointed out to him.
Benny had realized that since Sean was inevitable, she might as well be polite about it. Patsy told her that her mother and father had been worried in case she’d make a fuss.
“It’s only lunch. It’s not a lifetime,” Benny had said philosophically.
“They’d be well pleased if it was a lifetime.”
“No, Patsy, you can’t be serious. Not anymore. Surely not anymore. Once they may have thought about it.”
“I don’t know. You can’t lay down laws for what people think and hope.”
But Patsy was wrong. Benny knew that her parents couldn’t have any hopes that she should consider Sean Walsh. Business was poor. Money was tight. She knew this. And she knew that they couldn’t have embarked on the whole costly business of letting her have a university education unless they had hopes of better things for her. If they believed she would marry Sean Walsh and that he would run Hogan’s, they would have tried to force her into doing a secretarial course and bookkeeping. They would have put her into the shop. They would never have let her near a world that had all it had in it. The world that had given her Jack Foley.
The mass in the convent was always a delight. Father Ross loved the pure clear voices of the younger nuns in the choir. There was never coughing or spluttering or fidgeting when he said mass in the chapel of St. Mary’s. The nuns chanted responses and rang the bells perfectly. He didn’t have to deal with sleepy or recalcitrant altar servers. And there was nothing like the amazing and highly disrespectful fashion show to which the parish church in Knockglen had been treated this morning. Here everybody was in the religious life except of course young Eve Malone, who had grown up here.
His eyes rested on the small dark girl as he turned to give the final blessing Ite Missa Est.
He saw her bow her head as reverently as any of the sisters when she said, “Deo Gratias.”
He had been worried to hear that she was going to live in that house where her mother had died, out of her senses in childbirth, and where her poor father too had lost his life. She was too young a child to have a place on her own, with all the dangers that this might involve. But Mother Francis, who was an admirably sensible woman, was in favor of it.
“It’s only up the garden, Father,” she had reassured him. “In a way it’s part of the convent. It’s as if she never left us at all.”
He looked forward now to his breakfast in the parlor. Sister Imelda’s crisply fried rashers, with triangles of potato cakes, which would make a man forget everything in the world and follow its smell and its taste wherever it led.
Mrs. Walsh the housekeeper at Westlands cycled back from Knockglen. Mr. Simon and Miss Heather would go out to church at eleven-thirty. The old gentleman hadn’t gone to any service for a long time. It was sad to see him so feeble in his chair and yet at times he would remember very clearly. Usually things best forgotten. Sad incidents, accidents, disasters. Never happy times, no weddings, christenings or festivities.
Mrs. Walsh never spoke of her life in the big house. She could have had a wide audience for tales of the child sitting talking to Clara about the puppies, to Mr. Woffles about his Christmas lettuce and to the pony about how she was going to become a harness maker and invent something softer than the bit for his poor tender mouth.
Mrs. Walsh had warned Bee Moore that she didn’t want to hear any stories coming from her reporting either. People were always quick to criticize a family which was different to the village. And the Westwards were a different religion, a different class and also a different nationality. The Anglo-Irish might consider themselves Irish, Mrs. Walsh said very often, to make her point more firmly to Bee Moore. But of course they were nothing of the sort. They were as English as the people who lived across the sea. Their only problem was that they didn’t realize it.
Mr. Simon, now, he had his eye on a lady from England, from Hampshire. He was going to invite her to stay. But not in Westlands. He was going to put her up at Healy’s Hotel, which was his way of saying that he hadn’t made his mind up about her enough to have her in the house.
Mrs. Walsh cycled back to cook the breakfast and thought that Mr. Simon was ill-advised. Healy’s Hotel was no place to put a rich woman from Hampshire in. It was a place with shabby fittings and cramped rooms. The lady would not look favorably on Mr. Simon and on Westlands, and on the whole place. She would go back to Hampshire with her thousands and thousands of pounds.
And the object of the invitation surely had been for her to stay and marry into the family, bringing more English blood and even more important, bringing the finances the place needed so desperately.
Mother Clare looked at Eve with a dislike she barely attempted to conceal.
“I’m pleased to see that you have recovered from all your various illnesses, such as they may have been,” she said.
Eve smiled at her. “Thank you, Mother Clare. You were always very kind to me. I am so sorry that I didn’t repay it properly at the time.”
“Or at all,” sniffed Mother Clare.
“I suppose I repaid it in some form by getting myself out of your way.” Eve was bland and innocent. “You didn’t have to think about me anymore and try to fit me into your world, just out of kindness to Mother Francis.”
The nun looked at her suspiciously, but could find no mockery or double meaning in the words.
“You seem to have got everything you wanted,” she said.
“Not everything, Mother.” Eve wondered whether to quote Saint Augustine and say th
at our hearts were restless until they rested in the Lord. She decided against it. That was going over the top.
“Not every single thing, but a lot certainly,” she said. “Would you like me to show you my cottage? It’s a bit of a walk through the briars and everything, but it’s not too slippy.”
“Later, child. Another day, perhaps.”
“Yes. It’s just I didn’t know how long you were staying …” Again her face was innocent.
Last night, as on so many Christmas Eves, she had sat and talked with Mother Francis. This time even telling the nun a little about Aidan Lynch and the funny quirky relationship they had.
Mother Francis had said the worst thing about Mother Clare’s visit was that it seemed to be open-ended. She couldn’t ask the other nun when she was going to leave. Eve had promised to do it in her stead.
Mother Clare did not like to be asked her plans so publicly.
“Oh … I mean … well,” she stammered.
“What day are you going Mother Clare, because I want to be sure I can show it to you. You brought me into your home, the least I can do is bring you into mine.”
She forced Mother Clare to give a date. Then by an amazing surprise it turned out that Peggy Pine was driving to Dublin that day. The departure was fixed.
Mother Francis flashed a glance of gratitude to Eve.
A glance of gratitude and love.
Patsy had had a watch from Mossy for Christmas. That meant only one thing. The next present would be a ring.
“Eve says she thinks he’s building onto the back of the house,” Benny said.
“Ah, it’s hard to know with Mossy,” Patsy said.
They set the table with crackers, and crisscross paper decorations as they had done every year as long as Benny could remember.
Around the house they had paper lanterns. The Christmas tree in the window had had the same ornaments on it for years. This year Benny had bought some new ones in Henry Street and Moore Street in Dublin.
She felt a lump in her throat when her father and mother examined them with pleasure as if they were anything except the most vulgar red and silver tatty objects you could come across.
They were so touched at anything she did for them, and yet she was the one who should be thanking them. You didn’t need to be Einstein to see that the business was not doing well. That it was a struggle for them to keep going and to give her what they did. And yet there was no way to tell them that she would one million times prefer to do what Eve was doing, to work her own way through College, staying in a house helping with the work, or minding children.
Anything at all, including being down on her hands and knees cleaning public lavatories. If it meant that she didn’t have to come back to Knockglen every single night, if it meant that she would live in the same town as Jack Foley.
“Poor Sean. He won’t be any trouble?” Benny’s mother spoke in a question.
“And I couldn’t let him work all day yesterday and not ask him for a bite to eat today, seeing that he missed his bus home?” Benny’s father’s remark was a question too.
“Will he ever get a place to live himself, you know a house here?” Benny asked.
“Funny you should say that. There’s talk that he’s above on the road over the quarry looking at this place and that. Maybe that’s what’s on his mind.”
“He’ll have his job cut out for him saving enough for a house with what he’s paid above in the shop.” Eddie Hogan was regretful.
He didn’t need to say because they all knew it, that there wasn’t a question of Sean being underpaid. It was just that the takings were so poor there wasn’t much to pay anyone at all out of it.
Everything happened at the same time. Sean Walsh knocked on the front door which nobody ever used, but he thought that on Christmas Day things would be different. Dessie Burns arrived at the back door as drunk as a lord saying that he only wanted a stable to sleep in, just a stable. If it was good enough for Our Savior, it would be good enough for Dessie Burns, and perhaps a plate of dinner brought out to him wouldn’t go amiss. Dr. Johnson came roaring out of his avenue to borrow Eddie Hogan’s car. “Of all bloody times of that thoughtless bastard up in Westlands to go and have a turn it has to be bloody Christmas Day just as I was putting my fork in the bloody turkey,” he roared, and drove off in the Hogan’s Morris Cowley.
Birdie Mac arrived agitated saying that Mr. Flood, who had normally seen one nun in the tree above his house now saw three and was out with a stick trying to attract their attention and get them to come in for a cup of tea. Birdie had been down to Peggy Pine to ask her advice and Peggy had been something akin to intoxicated and told her to tell Mr. Flood to get up in the tree with them.
And Jack Foley rang from Dublin, braving the post office, which hated connecting calls on Christmas Day unless they were emergencies.
“It is an emergency,” he had explained.
And when Benny came on the line he said that it was the greatest emergency in his whole life. He wanted her to know how much he missed her.
Patsy went for a walk with Mossy, when everything had been cleared away. This year for the first time, Benny suggested that they should all take part in the washing up. They opened front and back doors to let out the smells of food. Benny said it was hardly tactful to the hens to let them smell the turkey dinner, but perhaps hens had closed off sections of their minds on this subject. Sean didn’t know how to react to this kind of chat. He debated several attitudes and decided to look stern.
The big grandfather clock in the corner ticked loudly as first Eddie Hogan and then Annabel fell asleep in the warm firelight. Shep slept too, his big eyes closing slowly and unwillingly as if anxious not to leave Benny and Sean to talk on their own.
Benny knew that she could sleep too, or pretend to. Sean would regard this not as the rudeness it was, but as some kind of sign that he was a welcome intimate in their home. Anyway she was too excited to sleep.
Jack had phoned from his own house where he said they were all playing games and he had sneaked away to tell her that he loved her.
Benny was as wide-awake as she ever had been. She longed for better company than Sean Walsh, and yet she felt sorry for him. Tonight he would go back to that small room two floors above the shop. Nobody had telephoned to say they missed him. She could afford to be generous.
“Have another chocolate, Sean.” She offered the box.
“Thank you.” He even managed to look awkward eating a simple thing like a sweet. It went slowly down his neck. There was a lot of swallowing and clearing his throat.
“You look very … um … nice today, Benny,” he said, after some thought. Too much thought for the remark that resulted.
“Thank you Sean. I suppose everyone feels well on Christmas Day.”
“I haven’t particularly, not up to now,” he confessed.
“Well, today’s lunch was nice, wasn’t it?”
He leaned across from his chair. “Not just the lunch. You were nice, Benny. That gives me a lot of hope.”
She looked at him with a great wave of sympathy. It was something she never thought would happen. Within an hour two men were declaring themselves to her. In films the women were able to cope with this, and even play one off against the other.
But this was no film. This was poor, sad Sean Walsh seriously thinking that he might marry into the business. She must make sure that he realized this was not going to happen. There had to be words somewhere that would leave him with a little dignity and make him realize that things would not be improved by his asking again. Sean was of the old school that thought women said “No” when they meant “Yes,” and all you had to do was ignore the refusals until they became an acceptance.
She tried to think how she would like to hear it herself. Suppose Jack were to tell her that he loved someone else, what would be the best way for her to find out? She would like him to be honest, and tell her directly, no apologies, or regrets. Just the facts. And then she would like hi
m to go away and let her digest it all on her own.
Would it be the same for Sean Walsh?
She looked into the changing pictures and leaping flames of the fire as she spoke. There was a background of her parents’ heavy breathing. The clock ticked, and Shep whimpered a little.
She told Sean Walsh her plans and her hopes. That she would live in Dublin, and she had great hopes that it would all work out.
Sean listened to the news impassively. The part about the person she loved caused him to smile. A crooked little smile.
“Would you not agree that this might be just what they call a crush?” he asked loftily.
Benny shook her head.
“But it’s not based on anything, any shared hopes or plans, like a real relationship is.”
She looked at him astounded. Sean Walsh talking about a real relationship as if he would have the remotest idea what it was.
She was still humoring him. “Well, of course you’re right. It might not work out, but it’s my hope it will.”
The smile was even more bitter. “And does he, this lucky man, know anything about your infatuation. Is he aware of all this … hope?”
“Of course he is. He hopes too,” she said, surprised. Sean obviously thought that she just fancied someone from afar like a film star.
“Ah well, we’ll see,” he said, and he sat looking into the fire with his sad pale eyes.
Patsy had been up in Mossy’s house for the evening wearing her new watch and going through a further inspection by Mossy’s mother. Mossy’s married sister and her husband had come in to give the encounter even further significance.
