by Mary Lavin
He was certainly taking his duties as chairman seriously, talking affably to everyone, like the host at a private dance. He seemed bent on making the night a success. Yet she could see that he himself was hardly enjoying it. He did not appear to have brought along a girl, or to belong to a proper party, and he danced only duty dances. She kept watching him. Wasn’t there something patronising in being so determined that others enjoy what he himself so obviously disdained? Well, she wasn’t enjoying it, either. She’d far rather be writing up her notes in the reading-room of the National Library. And when the night came to an end and she caught sight of him again, in the vestibule, turning up the collar of his overcoat, it occurred to her that he was doing so less as a precaution against the weather than against further contamination by his fellows. She put up her own collar. That was the very way she felt about most of her then fellow students. It was all she could do not to smile at him, which would have been absurd. Neither tonight nor at any other time had he ever noticed her.
But the very next evening, at the library, when he came in and took the only vacant seat, which happened to be the one next to her, she saw a faint look of recognition on his face as he put down his notebooks. Faintly she let recognition show on her own face. And, incredibly, he smiled. ‘Did you enjoy the dance last night?’ he asked.
‘Oh, yes,’ she said eagerly, thinking of his efforts to make it a success. Immediately, she repented her hypocrisy. ‘That kind of thing isn’t much in my line, though,’ she added.
He looked surprised. ‘I thought all girls were mad about dancing,’ he said. The attendant brought him his books just then, but before he started to read, he looked at her again. ‘Haven’t I seen you somewhere?’
‘Last night, I suppose.’
‘No, somewhere else,’ he said severely, before he settled down to study. After that, he neither spoke nor looked at her till the bell rang at ten o’clock. Then he turned to her. ‘I know where I’ve seen you,’ he said, and he seemed very pleased at placing her. ‘In Leeson Street.’
‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘You live there, too, don’t you?’
She was quite unprepared for the cross look that came over his face. ‘I do not,’ he said coldly. ‘I live in Kildare.’ Gathering up his books, he stalked out of the library.
Well, that’s that, she thought.
But it was not. Outside on the landing, he was standing, obviously waiting for her because the minute she came out he took up their conversation as if it were an immensely important discussion. ‘I have to stay in Dublin from Mondays to Fridays,’ he explained. ‘But that’s not the same as saying I live here. I couldn’t bear it. I hate Dublin!’ His forcefulness took her breath away.
‘But it’s such a beautiful city,’ she protested. They had reached the door and stepped out into the evening air, where, between the columns of the stone colonnade, sky, cloud, and tree were so wayward and free that the heart was troubled by their vernal beauty. ‘I love Dublin,’ she said intensely, though she felt that the slender connection between them would surely now snap like a twig. ‘Well, I’ll say good night!’ she said more timidly. A little sadly, she went out of the gates and up the street.
Yet the next afternoon they met again. This time in Leeson Street. He had taken off his hat, and there was something about the way he was sauntering along that made it hard to believe he was not enjoying the air and the sunlight.
‘Oh, good afternoon,’ he said stiffly.
‘Isn’t it a lovely afternoon?’ she said.
‘The air is fresh,’ he allowed, but he frowned as he looked up the street.
Vera looked up the street too. How could he not appreciate the beauty of the architecture? The light that had left one side of the street was following further on the other side, striking the white plastered recesses of the windows and the white painted window sills which gave back the light in diminishing scale, as a hand passing over the keys of a piano gives back notes divinely graded.
His face was severe. ‘I suppose you’d say these old houses were beautiful. To me they’re ugly and ought to be pulled down.’
He was very aggressive, but she felt there was some tribute in his remembering their brief conversation of the previous evening. ‘I don’t see how anyone could call them ugly,’ she said.
‘Wait a minute,’ he said. ‘Are we talking about the outsides or the insides, because I’m afraid I’m only thinking of the insides? Do you know, I often stand at the door of the digs with my latchkey in my hand, dreading to open the door on the dinginess, the dark, and the smell!’
‘The smell? That must be damp, I suppose. Doesn’t your landlady have fires?’
He looked as if he had not thought it might be damp. ‘Oh, you know the sort of fires they have in a lodging-house,’ he said then. ‘Once, I threw an orange peel on to the fire in the morning and it was still there when I came back that night.’
‘But that’s not the fault of the house,’ she protested.
He wasn’t listening. ‘I was in another digs, in Fitzwilliam Street, when I was a first-year student, and there were initials carved into the banister rail all the way up the stairs, the way you’d see them carved into the bark of a tree, but one day the curtains on the landing window were taken down, and when the light fell across the stairs I saw it wasn’t into the wood they were carved at all but into a coating of grease and dirt on the top of the rail.’
She had to laugh at that, but she still made a protest. ‘That wasn’t the fault of the house, either. You’re not being fair! And anyway, houses aren’t like people; they don’t get ugly just because they get old. There’s an old house out in the country in Summerhill—’ She broke off, because straight in front of them, set in a circle cut out of the cement, was a young sycamore tree, its sooty branches showered with young green leaves, fine as rain. ‘Oh, just look at that tree!’ she cried. ‘What have you got in Kildare to equal that? And have you heard the Dublin birds?’
‘I hear a few starving sparrows now and then, in the backyard of the digs,’ he said.
‘Oh, they’re probably country birds that ought never to have left home. I’m talking about the city birds that live in the creeper on the houses. Did you hear that?’ she cried excitedly, as just then, just above them, a small bird gave a vesper call.
‘Where is it?’ he asked, staring at the grey and withered creeper, thin as a cobweb, on the brick. They could not see even a stir. It was as if the bricks were singing.
‘It probably has a nest somewhere in the creeper. I must try if I can see it from my window because this is where I live,’ she said, putting her hand on the iron rail that led up a flight of steps.
‘Oh, the house with the bird,’ he said gallantly, but she saw that the look he threw over the house was sharp and critical. ‘I’ll see you in the library some time, I suppose,’ he said vaguely.
‘I suppose so,’ she said, vaguely, too, and she was glad that her answer was drowned by another note, single but clear as water, that came just then from the creeper.
After that it was well over a week before they met again. She was already at her desk in the library when he appeared, but the minute he saw her he came straight over. ‘Was I rude the other day, talking like that about the street where you live?’ He seemed concerned.
‘Oh, I didn’t mind. The houses on this side are in good condition.’
‘I hope you’re not just saying that to make me feel better,’ he said earnestly. ‘I think it’s something in my nature that makes me hate the city. I feel a different person the minute I step off the bus on the country road.’
‘Isn’t it good you can get away like that,’ she said, feeling more sympathy with him than the last time.
‘It is. I don’t know what I’d do if I couldn’t,’ he said, and she realised there was a note of desperation in his voice.
‘Th
ere’s no reason why you shouldn’t always be able to go home, is there?’
‘No immediate reason,’ he said slowly, and then his words came with a rush. ‘My mother died two years ago and I never feel the same about going down there since she died.’ But at this point an old gentleman at the desk in front of them turned around and frowned. ‘We’re disturbing people. I’ll tell you another time,’ he said. ‘Perhaps we might walk up the street together at ten o’clock?’
‘If you like,’ she said, trying to sound different.
‘I’ll tell you about it as we’re walking along,’ he said.
All the same when the bell rang, she thought he’d forgotten her. He walked out of the library without giving her a glance. Like the last time, however, he was waiting for her outside, and he took up what he had been saying as if he’d left off the previous minute. ‘Things had never been the same since my brother married, anyway,’ he said, and sighed. ‘My sister-in-law is very kind. She tries hard to please me. And my brother sends one of the workmen to meet the bus at Clane every Friday night with my bicycle. But it’s not the same as when my mother was alive. I can’t feel I’m wanted in the same way. To tell you the truth, I spend most of the time out with my gun, wandering about the woods.’
‘Oh, I’m sure they like having you,’ she said. And why wouldn’t they? she thought, looking at him. He was really very nice. But he wasn’t listening to her.
‘I know one thing,’ he said determinedly. ‘I wouldn’t go down there very often if there was a family on the way.’
‘What difference would that make?’ She was obviously surprised. ‘It hardly seems fair to hope they won’t have any,’ she said, finding it hard not to laugh.
‘Oh, I wasn’t thinking about them. I was thinking about myself. I’d hate to be there if there was anything like that going on. Something happened last summer, you see,’ he said, lowering his voice. ‘They didn’t tell me what was the matter, but my sister-in-law was in bed for several days. It was during the holidays, and I was at home for two months. It was very awkward for me. I stayed out most of the day, but I had to go in sometimes. I felt very uncomfortable.’
‘Did she have a miscarriage?’
‘I suppose so,’ he said, and he gave her a glance that she found hard to interpret, except that he looked less uncomfortable. He must have been embarrassed. ‘The house was full of women, anyway,’ he went on, and more easily, more naturally, she thought. Was it possible that he had appreciated her explicitness? ‘Her sisters came, two of them, and extra local women to help with the housework. There were women going up and down the stairs all the time, whispering. ‘I’d never want to get married if there was much of that going on.’
This time she did laugh outright. ‘But why would there be? It doesn’t often happen.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he said cautiously. ‘Women feel differently about these things. They revel in it, if you ask me.’
‘Not all of them!’ she protested. ‘Not me.’
‘Not you, maybe,’ he agreed absently. ‘But then, you’re not like other girls. I never met a girl like you before. By the way,’ he said, ‘you said something about Summerhill the other day. That’s very near where I live. How do you know it so well?’
‘I live there,’ she said. ‘Near there, anyway, about a mile outside the village.’
‘But I thought you said you lived in that house in Leeson Street.’ He looked so confused she felt like laughing.
‘No. I’ve got a flat there, but I only stay there on week days. Like you I go home every Friday too.’
He stared at her. ‘I might have known!’ he said then.
She laughed outright. ‘Thank you. I take it that’s a compliment?’ They had reached where she lived. ‘Oh, look at our tree!’ she exclaimed. Only a week had passed since they’d looked up at it for the first time together, but the green buds that had looked as if they’d rained upon the branches were now as big as birds.
‘They’re as big as birds!’ he exclaimed, exactly as if he had read her mind. ‘You’d think if you clapped your hands they’d rise up and fly away.’
Oh, but if those buds were birds, not for anything would she clap her hands. Ordinary as the moment was, she wanted to prolong it as long as possible, and with it the new delicate delight it held for her. But even while she held her breath, the magic went, and without looking down she knew that his attention had been taken by something else. ‘I must ask you to excuse me,’ he said abruptly. ‘I forgot I had promised to meet someone tonight.’
She didn’t need to look to know it was another girl, but she didn’t expect the girl who was waiting impatiently for him on the other side of the street to be so striking, tall like him, and with a strong but perfect face. But as the girl impatiently stepped off the pavement and came across the street to meet him, it was her eyes that held attention. What word would describe them? The only word that came to mind hardly made sense, but it fitted exactly, they were ranging eyes. She felt she was never going to see him again.
On the following Monday evening however, when she went to the library, he was there, although he didn’t seem to see her. She sat down and tried to concentrate. It was a fine evening, and on the dome overhead, still daylit and blue, a few pigeons paraded. They could be very distracting, because although through the frosted glass their bodies were blurred, their pink feet formed patterns exact and clear cut. After a few minutes, one of them caught up a lump of dislodged masonry with his pink toes and clinked it against the glass. Lifting it, he let it drop again, and then repeated the performance and it was soon apparent that this noise would be kept up as long as there was light in the sky. One or two people tittered. One or two frowned.
Almost immediately, Andrew Gill stood up and came over to her. ‘I can’t settle down with that wretched bird,’ he said. ‘How about you? Will we go?’
He wants to talk about that girl, she thought, and I don’t want to hear about her. All the same she got up and went with him. Hoping perhaps to forestall his confidences, she was the first to speak when they were out of the Reading Room. ‘Did you enjoy the weekend?’ she asked.
‘Oh, I didn’t go home,’ he said.
That girl, of course! She was sure this had something to do with her. ‘Why?’ she asked, in a small voice, but evidently she was wrong.
‘Family reasons,’ he said, almost as if she should have known. ‘I’ll tell you when we get outside,’ he added.
‘I thought it had something to do with that girl you met the other night,’ she said, before she realised she was giving something away.
‘Olive?’ He looked surprised. ‘Why would I stay in Dublin for her?’ His words were so impersonal, as was his voice, and even the expression on his face, that her heart lifted, and she didn’t mind his next words in the least, although they were all in praise of the girl. ‘You saw her? Isn’t she very striking? And she’s brilliantly clever. She’s been qualified a year, and she’s younger than me. What did you think of her?’ Before she could answer, he lowered his voice and went on. ‘She’s very strange, though,’ he said. ‘I know her fairly well. I met her last summer in London. I was over there with the Debating Society, expenses paid, of course, and I stayed on a few days with a chap I know who has a room in Chelsea. I ran into her in the King’s Road one afternoon. I recognised her at once from law lectures. Who wouldn’t recognise a face like that. I didn’t expect her to know me. Our eyes met, though, and she stopped. We talked for a few minutes, and I thought I ought to ask her to have a cup of tea. I didn’t expect she’d accept, but she did, and would you believe it, we weren’t halfway through the tea when she asked me for a loan. Can you imagine that?’
‘Did you give it to her?’
‘You don’t know how much she wanted, or you wouldn’t ask that,’ he said. ‘Thirty pounds! I don’t suppose I had thirty shillings in my pocket at
the time.’
‘Did she tell you what she wanted it for?’
‘No. And I didn’t ask. I felt safer not knowing. You feel kind of responsible for people from home when you meet them in a strange city, don’t you think? But I knew that I wasn’t the only one to whom she could turn because she mentioned a medical student we both knew, and mentioned that she was meeting him that night. Convery was his name. I always thought him a nice fellow, although I didn’t know him well. He’d failed his finals, she said, and she seemed upset about it, so I felt they must know each other fairly well. Oddly enough I ran into the two of them again that evening, I mean I saw them. They didn’t see me. It was in a restaurant in Soho, one of those places where there’s a small space for dancing. They were so taken up with each other they didn’t see anyone. He was leaning across the table and whispering in her ear, but when I looked closer I saw there were tears in her eyes. I felt very sorry that I couldn’t help her. And I think she knew I was sincere in that, because when we were both back in Dublin she looked me up. And she’s been looking me up ever since, off and on, and asking me to meet her, like the other evening when you saw her. It’s hard to know what she wants from me, though. She never stays long with me. She’s very restless. But yet there are times when she rings me up and says she simply must see me or she’ll go mad.’
‘What about the other fellow?’
‘Oh, he’s back in Dublin, too. He did his finals again but he barely scraped a pass. I think he’s not practising either. I don’t know why.’
‘Are they seeing each other still?’ She hesitated. ‘What I mean is that she must have some interest in you, in spite of what you said about the other fellow.’
