Selected Stories

‘The horses. Punchestown. The world of the race-course,’ Kathleen said. ‘You’ve had an interesting life, Emily.’

It seemed to Emily that Norah was about to shake her head, that for the first time the sisters were on the verge of a disagreement. It didn’t surprise her: the observation that had been made astonished her.

‘Unusual is what my sister means.’ Norah nodded her correction into place, her tone softening the contradiction.

‘There’s many a woman doesn’t get out and about,’ Kathleen said.

Emily poured more tea and added turf to the fire. She had forgotten to draw the curtains over and she did so now. The light in the room was dim; he’d been particular about low-wattage electric bulbs. But the dimness made the room cosy and it seemed wrong that anywhere should be so while he lay only a few hours dead. She wondered what she’d do when another bulb went, either here or somewhere else, if she would replace it with a stronger one or if low-wattage light was part of her now. She wondered if her nervousness was part of her too. It didn’t seem that it had always been, but she knew she could be wrong about that.

‘I didn’t go out and about much,’ she said because a silence in the conversation had come. Both visitors were stirring sugar into their tea. When their teaspoons were laid down, Norah said:

‘There’s some wouldn’t bother with that.’

‘He was a difficult man. People would have told you.’

They did not contradict that. They did not say anything. She said:

‘He put his trust in the horses. Since childhood what he wanted was to win races, to be known for it. But he never managed much.’

‘Poor man,’ Kathleen murmured. ‘Poor man.’

‘Yes.’

She shouldn’t have complained, she hadn’t meant to: Emily tried to say that, but the words wouldn’t come. She looked away from the women who had visited her, gazing about her at the furniture of a room she knew too well. He had been angry when she’d taken the curtains down to wash them; everyone staring in, he’d said, and she hadn’t known what he’d meant. Hardly anyone passed by on the road.

‘He married me for the house,’ she said, unable to prevent herself from saying that too. The women were strangers, she was speaking ill of the dead. She shook her head in an effort to deny what she’d said, but that seemed to be a dishonesty, worse than speaking ill.

The women sipped their tea, both lifting the cups to their lips in the same moment.

‘He married me for the forty acres,’ Emily said, compelled again to say what she didn’t want to. ‘I was a Protestant girl that got passed by until he made a bid for me and I thought it was romantic, like he did himself - the race cards, the race ribbons, the jockeys’ colours, the big crowd there’d be. That’s how it happened.’

‘Ah now, now,’ Kathleen said. ‘Ah now, dear.’

‘I was a fool and you pay for foolishness. I was greedy for what marriage might be, and you pay for greed. We’d a half acre left after what was paid back a year ago. There’s a mortgage he took out on the house. I could have said to him all the time he was dying, “What’ll I do?” But I didn’t, and he didn’t say anything either. God knows what his last thoughts were.’

They told her she was upset. One after the other they told her any widow would be, that it was what you had to expect. Norah said it twice. Kathleen said she could call on them in her grief.

‘There’s no grief in the house you’ve come to.’

‘Ah now, now,’ Kathleen said, her big face puckered in distress. ‘Ah, now.’

‘He never minded how the truth came out, whether he’d say it or not. He didn’t say I was a worthless woman, but you’d see it in his eyes. Another time, I’d sweep the stable-yard and he’d say what use was that. He’d push a plate of food away untouched. We had two collies once and they were company. When they died he said he’d never have another dog. The vet wouldn’t come near us. The man who came to read the meter turned surly under the abuse he got for driving his van into the yard.’

‘There’s good and bad in everyone, Emily.’ Norah whispered that opinion and, still whispering, repeated it.

‘Stay where you are, Emily,’ Kathleen said, ‘and I’ll make another pot of tea.’

She stood up, the teapot already in her hand. She was used to making tea in other people’s kitchens. She’d find her way about, she said.

Emily protested, but even while she did she didn’t care. In all the years of her marriage another woman hadn’t made tea in that kitchen, and she imagined him walking in from the yard and finding someone other than herself there. The time she began to paint the scullery, it frightened her when he stood in the doorway, before he even said a thing. The time she dropped the sugar bag and the sugar spilt out all over the floor he watched her sweeping it on to the dustpan, turf dust going with it. He said what was she doing, throwing it away when it was still fit to stir into your tea? The scullery had stayed half-painted to this day.