by Edna O'Brien
Luckily she had a pound in her bag which served as a deposit. While the man wrote out a receipt she sat on the armchairs, then on the couch, moving along the seat to make sure it was thoroughly sprung. How well it would fit into her front room. In the evenings, she and Mr Farley would have an armchair each. In May when Mr Farley went on the boiler-maker’s outing she and her friend would share the couch. It would be perfect. May … the sun through the windows shining on the castor-oil plant, and the couch a darker shade of green with antimacassars to protect it from sun and greasy hair. There would be a cushion for behind his back, and with a bit of luck some things would be in bloom, disguising the creosote-soaked fence. He would see what a good gardener she was.
‘Certainly, madam,’ the shop assistant was saying in answer to her question about delivery. They would deliver anything; she could pay as and when she liked.
‘Have a look around at other things,’ he said. They sold new as well as second-hand furniture.
‘I’d love one of those.’ She pointed to a display of cut-glass vases that were on a glass-topped table. Even in winter light the chips of cut-glass revealed the colours of a rainbow. Wisteria would go lovely in a tall vase like that. Weepy wisteria. Her favourite flower. A watery blue, faded, rather like a garment that has had repeated washings.
‘When I win the pools,’ she said, and went off to work smiling to herself.
It was a shocking day. The snow had been on the ground now for eight whole weeks. When it first fell, and at each new fall, it was downy white, but in between it was the colour of Mr Farley’s chamber pot as she picked it up for emptying each morning. No fresh vegetables either. Talk of coal and paraffin oil being rationed. London was never able to cope with crises, no planning.
She was doing two houses that morning. In all, she cleaned six houses a week; two on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. She devoted the other days to her own home and consequently it was a little palace. Even her husband admitted it. He saw a lot of houses because he installed boilers. He knew how dirty the average London house was: soot on the window sashes, wainscotings never wiped, television knobs never dusted.
‘Well I got a bargain at last,’ she said to Mrs Captain Hagerty, her first employer, that morning. Mrs Captain Hagerty was on the telephone complaining about a blanket which she’d bought and which had shrunk.
‘It’s my lucky year,’ Mrs Farley said, taking off her coat, her outside cardigan and her boots. There was no doubt. Mrs Captain Hagerty thought, but that Mrs Farley was more spry. She was still plump, but her face was different: the lines softer, the look in her eye not so heartlessly blue. Could Mrs Farley have found another man? Mrs Captain Hagerty thought not, but she was wrong. Mrs Farley had indeed found a man in her forty-sixth year. They had known each other slightly for years – he lived near by – had chatted at bus stops on and off, and once he let her take his turn in the butcher’s. Just before Christmas she realized that she had not seen him for weeks, and for several more weeks she searched for him. She would think of his face, especially at night, when she was tired – his thin, disappointed face and his eye sockets riddled with crow’s feet. He worked in a furniture factory, and probably had to keep his eyes constantly screwed up so as not to get sawdust in them. That was the thing about hard work, it showed on your hands, or face, or some part of you.
She’d given up hope of ever seeing him again when in fact they met in a snowfall one day and she rushed to shake hands with him. He’d got thinner but the crow’s feet were less pronounced. He’d been sick. Nearly died he said. Suddenly, before she knew what she was doing, she had a hand out saying, ‘Don’t die on me,’ and then they pulled off gloves and gripped hands like two people who had a desperate need to grip. They went for a walk down a side street.
‘I saw something about a snowflake on television,’ she said to him. ‘It’s a perfect crystal.’
‘I saw that, too,’ he said, and squeezed her hand tighter. The snow brushed her cheeks but softly, like petals, and warm tears filled her eyes. They were both in the same predicament, married to people they didn’t care for, working all day, home at night, television, bed, alarm clock set for six. She thought it a coincidence that they should both be bordering on forty-six and be keen gardeners. Before a half hour was spent they were in love, and like all clandestine lovers they were already conscious of the risks. It was her dry eyes, he said, that first drew her to him, that day in the butcher’s. She admitted that she’d had plenty of occasion to cry, in her time.
‘Even now,’ he said. Through the film of tears she saw him smile at her and she told him how happy they were going to be.
‘Yes, I’ve had a lot of good fortune lately,’ she said to Mrs Captain Hagerty as she mopped up the pool of water under the radiator, which her boots had caused.
Mrs Captain Hagerty was saving in her splendidly authoritative voice into the telephone:
‘Is that the manager? Well, this is Mrs Captain Hagerty, yes, it is a blanket, strawberry-coloured, it shrunk shockingly. I can’t tell you, I mean it’s hardly fit for a single bed now …’ Then she listened for a second or two, smiled at the mouthpiece, and in a changed voice said, ‘Oh, but how kind, how terribly kind, and you’ll collect it … thank you.’
Mrs Captain Hagerty had had her way. A van was on its way to collect the fated blanket which she had boiled by mistake in the copper. She was even willing to listen to Mrs Farley’s troubles for a few seconds, although she couldn’t tolerate any sordid stories about the change.
‘It’s a lovely shop,’ Mrs Farley was saying. ‘It’s on the 93 bus route, right at the corner. I spotted this bargain yesterday, off the bus …’
Mrs Captain Hagerty decided that they might as well have coffee. If she had to listen to some story it was as well to be comfortable. Mrs Farley could make up the time later.
‘Green matches everything,’ Mrs Captain Hagerty said as she stirred saccharine into her coffee. One had to say something to these people.
‘And lovely vases,’ Mrs Farley went on. ‘Lovely, cut-glass ones, that shimmer.’
Mrs Farley was getting quite lyrical. She hadn’t mentioned her womb for weeks.
‘And they had ever such a funny card on the counter in front of the vases,’ Mrs Farley said, and then blushed as she recited it, the way a child would recite!
‘Lovely to look at,
Delightful to hold,
But if you break me
Consider me sold.’
‘Quite,’ Mrs Captain Hagerty said. Enough was enough. She stood up to make some more telephone calls. Mrs Farley had to drink down the last of her coffee hurriedly.
That night, in her small front room, Mrs Farley looked at her husband’s face in the faint, blue glow from the television screen and decided she would ask him when he wakened up. Even in dim light her husband was plain: fat, with round, pug-like cheeks and a paunch. Awake or asleep he tried to disguise the paunch by placing folded hands across it, and as far as she was concerned, merely drew attention to it. Yes, she’d ask him. She’d done everything to please him all evening. He’d had steak and kidney pie, a pint of director’s bitter from the pub, and the right television channel going. He only tolerated the channel which carried advertisements, insisting that the other lot were socialists. It seemed foolish because he slept through it anyhow, but he was a stubborn man and had to have his way.
‘Dan,’ she said when she saw him stir. ‘D’you know what I was just thinking about? D’you remember the winter of the big freeze and you found a lump of coal on the road and brought it home and it turned out to be ice that was black with soot?’
‘I remember it,’ he said. It was the only memory they ever resorted to. The ice had melted in the grate, ruining the chopped sticks which Mrs Farley had put there. In the end they’d gone out to a pub to get warm. It was nineteen forty-seven, the year of her first miscarriage. They often went to pubs then and had beer and salt-beef sandwiches.
‘Yes, I was just thinking about
it,’ she said, ‘when I was looking at you there asleep. Funny how you think of things for no reason.’
‘I remember it,’ he said. ‘It was in Hartfield Road, just beyond the railway bridge … I was coming along, very cold it was …’
From a distance she heard his voice receding into the story and she lowered the television.
‘Dan,’ she said when he had finished. ‘I did something reckless today. I couldn’t help it.’
‘What reckless?’ He was wide awake now, his tongue dampening the corners of his mouth.
‘I put a pound down on a three-piece suite.’
‘We have all the furniture we need,’ he said. ‘Still paying for those damn beds, I am.’
A year before Mrs Farley had implored him to get single, divan beds. She wasn’t well she said, and would be happier in a single bed. She needed privacy. It inconvenienced him no end.
‘A three-piece suite for only four pounds,’ she said. ‘It is a most beautiful, olive green.’
‘It must be worm-eaten, you wouldn’t get anything for four pounds.’
‘I beat him down,’ she said. ‘They were asking nine, but I beat him down. I think it was my eyes that did it.’ The sleepy salesman hadn’t even noticed her.
‘I’m not buying it,’ he said. ‘You can take that for definite.’
‘You remember,’ she said, ‘that you said you might get me an umbrella for my birthday, well, if you’re getting me anything, I’d rather have the money.’
If he gave her three pounds and if she did an hour extra for Mrs Captain Hagerty, and skimped on the food for herself, she might have the eight pounds balance by May the 10th, which was the day Mr Farley was going on the outing to Brighton. She’d invited her friend in. They had nowhere to meet, except on the street, and they couldn’t do much there except each take off a glove and walk hand-in-hand down a road, and up again. Once or twice they took a bus ride and had a cup of coffee a few miles away in Chelsea, but it didn’t feel natural.
They met on Saturdays and by coincidence Mr Farley’s outing was planned for a Saturday too. Her friend had promised to spend the whole afternoon with her, and for once he would defy his wife and say he was going to a football match. If she had the three-piece suite by then they could sit next to each other on the couch.
‘I made no promises about birthdays or anything else,’ Mr Farley was saying. Sulky old pig.
‘Oh, forget it,’ she said, turning up the television sound. ‘If being married for seventeen years means nothing to you I can’t help it. I can only feel that there’s something the matter somewhere …’ She clattered off towards the kitchen in her old bedroom slippers, mumbling.
‘Just a minute now …’ he called, but she went into the kitchen and worked her temper out by tidying the cutlery drawer.
That night when he asked for his rights, Mrs Farley was gratified to be able to say no.
‘You look well,’ her friend said, when they met the following Saturday. Each time she looked younger. Her cheeks were seasoned like an apple and her eyes shone. There was no telling, of course, about her figure because in winter clothes she was shapeless like everyone else.
‘It’s my hair,’ she said. She’d given herself a home perm and put a little peroxide in the water. If Mr Farley knew he’d kill her, so she had to sit well out of the light.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’ve been told I have hair the texture of a baby’s.’
He touched the permed ends with his finger, and asked how her week had been.
‘I love you more than ever.’
‘I love you more than ever,’ he said.
‘How’s your wife?’ she asked.
His wife was attending a National Health psychiatrist, learning after seventeen years of marriage how to be a married woman.
‘Not that it matters now to me,’ he said, squeezing Mrs Farley’s fingers. Her hands were coarse from all the washing and scrubbing but she’d bought rubber gloves and was taking more care.
‘Is she nice-looking?’ Mrs Farley asked.
‘Not as nice as you,’ he said. ‘She’s nothing to you.’
His wife had been a nurse and Mrs Farley reckoned that she would look down on her, who did for people … At least they’d never meet.
‘She’s bitter,’ he said. ‘You know, bitter … always getting a rub at you.’
Mrs Farley knew it well. Mr Farley did that too.
‘Don’t remind me of her,’ he said. They had arrived at the brick arch under the railway bridge, and she stood with her back to the wall waiting for him to kiss her. The thick, jagged icicles which hung from one corner of the arch were dripping down the wall and underneath the pool of water was re-freezing. She’d taken off one of her jerseys so as not to be too bulky for him.
‘I’ve decided what we’ll have the day you come in,’ she said as she kissed his cold nose. The poor man had bad circulation.
‘What?’ he said.
‘Pork chops and apple sauce,’ she said. ‘And bread-and-butter pudding to follow.’
‘That will be lovely.’
‘You’ll see the garden,’ she said. She heard herself describe the garden as it would be, wisteria on the fence, peonies in the heart-shaped bed, lily-of-the-valley in the deep grass under the gooseberry bush. And then as he opened her coat and put his arms around her she heard herself describe her own front room and in it the olive-green, three-piece suite figured prominently.
There was nothing he said he liked better than a house-proud woman. His wife wouldn’t even transfer tea from the packet into a biscuit tin which they used as a caddy. Mrs Farley said a woman like that didn’t deserve a home.
‘It’s time,’ he said, kissing her mouth, then her chin, then her neck which had got crepe with the years.
They began to walk, her hand in his pocket. Sometimes their hips touched. His body was very thin. His hip-bone stuck out.
‘We’ll have the time of our lives,’ she said. She didn’t know quite what would happen the day he visited her, but it would be the deciding one in their lives.
‘You’ll give me pork chops,’ he said.
‘Two for you and one for me.’
‘And a cuddle?’ he said.
‘I might,’ she said. She felt glowy all over, even her toes were no longer numb.
‘Oh.’ she put out her hand to make sure. It had begun to snow again. Her perm would be ruined.
‘Just a minute,’ he said, and ran into a paper shop. He came back with something for her head.
‘A new paper,’ she said. ‘That we haven’t even read.’
He held it over her as they walked along, keeping step.
‘We’re extravagant,’ she said. They stopped and kissed, using the paper as a shield to dismiss the world. That’s what being in love meant.
Three days before Mr Farley’s summer outing Mrs Farley celebrated her forty-seventh birthday. A day like any other, she cleaned two houses and hurried home to put on the dinner. Mr Farley hadn’t mentioned the birthday that morning, but then he was unbearable in the mornings. She bought a cake just to make the meal resemble a happy occasion. The antimacassars were made, she had paid five pounds on the three-piece suite and if he gave her money instead of an umbrella she could pay the balance by Saturday. She would have it delivered that day and when he came home from his outing he would be too tired to complain. There was one thing she would have to be careful about: her friend’s pipe. Mr Farley had a sensitive nose,, as he didn’t smoke himself. She’d have to get her friend out of the house by five and prop the door back as well as opening the window.
‘Is that you, Dad?’ She was upstairs when she heard him come in. The ‘Dad’ was an affectionate word since one of the three times when Mr Farley was almost a father.
‘It’s me,’ he said. She came down in a flowered summer dress, her face newly-freckled, because she’d done a bit of gardening while the dinner was cooking. Afterwards she undressed upstairs, and had a good look at herself in the mirror. If the
neighbours knew they would have the Welfare Officer on her.
‘Dinner’s ready,’ she said to Mr Farley, as she got his slippers from under the stairs. He put them on, then walked across to the laid table and put three pound notes on her side plate.
‘What’s that for?’ she asked.
‘Well, I got enough hints,’ he said.
‘No you didn’t,’ she said, ‘and not even a card with it.’ She sulked a bit. If she looked too happy he might take the money back. Happiness was the one thing he could not abide.
‘What use is a card?’ he said.
‘I may be sentimental, but don’t forget I’m a woman.’ she said. The three-piece suite was hers and she could hardly contain herself with excitement.
After dinner he went out and got a card which had ‘To my dear wife’ on the outside.
‘I suppose I have a lot of the schoolgirl in me,’ she said, putting it on the mantelshelf. She was doing everything to humour him. They discussed what shirt he’d wear on the outing and she said she’d make sandwiches in case he got peckish on the journey. They were having lunch, of course, in Brighton.
‘Don’t fall for any young girl in a bathing-suit,’ she said.
‘Is that what you think I’ll be doing?’ he said.
‘Well, who knows? A handsome man, fancy free.’
That pleased him. He offered to share some of his beer. That night she couldn’t very well refuse him his rights, but it was her friend’s body she imagined that circumferenced her own.
Next day when Mrs Captain Hagerty was shopping, Mrs Farley took the opportunity to telephone the furniture shop. She arranged to call in Saturday to pay the balance on the suite and asked if they could deliver it the same morning. The man – she recognized him as the one who took her money each week – said certainly.
On the Friday night she slept badly. For one thing Mr Farley had to be up early to catch the coach at Victoria Station. Also she was in a tremor over her friend’s visit. Would he like the lounge? Would the pork chops be a little greasy? What would she wear? She’d offer him a sherry when he first arrived, to break the ice. She thought of the doorbell ringing, of a kiss in the hallway, then walking ahead into the room where the three-piece suite would instantly catch his eye. And thinking of these things she fell fast asleep.
