Selected Stories

They talked about it. It could be, Alicia said, that the receipt had remained in one of Matthew’s pockets, that a jacket she had disposed of to one of her charities had later found itself in the Learys’ hands, having passed through a jumble sale. She could imagine Mrs Leary coming across it, and the temptation being too much. Leary was as weak as water, she said, adding that the tinker wife was a woman who never looked you in the eye. Foxy-faced and furtive, Mrs Leary pushed a ramshackle pram about the streets, her ragged children cowering in her presence. It was she who would have removed the flimsy carbon copy from the soiled receipt book. Leary would have been putty in her hands.

In the kitchen they sat down at the table from which Alicia had cleared away the polished cutlery. Matthew had died as tidily as he’d lived, Alicia said: all his life he’d been meticulous. The Learys had failed to take that into account in any way whatsoever. If it came to a court of law the Learys wouldn’t have a leg to stand on, with the written evidence that the precise amount taken out of the building society matched the amount of the bill, and further evidence in Matthew’s reputation for promptness about settling debts.

‘What I’m wondering is,’ Alicia said, ‘should we go to the Guards?’

‘The Guards?’

‘He shouldn’t have come here like that.’

That evening there arrived a bill for the amount quoted by Leary, marked Account rendered. It was dropped through the letter-box and was discovered the next morning beneath the Irish Independent

on the hall doormat.

‘The little twister!’ Alicia furiously exclaimed.

From the road outside the house came the morning commands of the convent girl in charge of the crossing to the school. ‘Get ready!’ ‘Prepare to cross!’ ‘Cross now!’ Impertinence had been added to dishonesty, Alicia declared in outraged tones. It was as though it had never been pointed out to Leary that Matthew had left the house on the evening in question with two hundred and twenty-six pounds in an envelope, that Leary’s attention had never been drawn to the clear evidence of the building-society entry.

‘It beats me,’ Catherine said, and in the hall Alicia turned sharply and said it was as clear as day. Again she mentioned going to the Guards. A single visit from Sergeant McBride, she maintained, and the Learys would abandon their cheek. From the play-yard the yells of the girls increased as more girls arrived there, and then the hand-bell sounded; a moment later there was silence.

‘I’m only wondering,’ Catherine said, ‘if there’s some kind of a mistake. ’

‘There’s no mistake, Catherine.’

Alicia didn’t comment further. She led the way to the kitchen and half filled a saucepan with water for their two boiled eggs. Catherine cut bread for toast. When she and Alicia had been girls in that same play-yard she hadn’t known of Matthew’s existence. Years passed before she even noticed him, at Mass one Saturday night. And it was ages before he first invited her to go out with him, for a walk the first time, and then for a drive.

‘What d’you think happened then?’ Alicia asked. ‘That Matthew bet the money on a dog? That he owed it for drink consumed? Have sense, Catherine.’

Had it been Alicia’s own husband whom Leary had charged with negligence, there would have been no necessary suspension of disbelief: feckless and a nuisance, involved during his marriage with at least one other woman in the town, frequenter of race-courses and dog-tracks and bars, he had ended in an early grave. This shared thought – that behaviour which was ludicrous when attached to Matthew had been as natural in Alicia’s husband as breathing – was there between the sisters, but was not mentioned.

‘If Father Cahill got Leary on his own,’ Alicia began, but Catherine interrupted. She didn’t want that, she said; she didn’t want other people brought into this, not even Father Cahill. She didn’t want a fuss about whether or not her husband had paid a bill.

‘You’ll get more of these,’ Alicia warned, laying a finger on the envelope that had been put through the letter-box. ‘They’ll keep on coming.’

‘Yes.’

In the night Catherine had lain awake, wondering if Matthew had maybe lost the money on his walk to the Learys’ house that evening, if he’d put his hand in his pocket and found it wasn’t there and then been too ashamed to say. It wasn’t like him; it didn’t make much more sense than thinking he had been a secretive man, with private shortcomings all the years she’d been married to him. When Alicia’s husband died Matthew had said it was hard to feel sorry, and she’d agreed. Three times Alicia had been left on her own, for periods that varied in length, and on each occasion they’d thought the man was gone for good; but he returned and Alicia always took him back. Of course Matthew hadn’t lost the money; it was as silly to think that as to wonder if he’d been a gambler.