Part Two

The smell of cooking oil filled the chip shop. Nancy was wringing out a dishcloth to clean the counter before she opened for business. Trying to think who else was in the house, she realised with relief that her daughter Miriam was out. If Miriam were here, she would come running down from her bedroom to say what she always said: that the smell was eating its way into the upper storeys of the house and getting into her clothes and into the very pores of her skin.

Nancy shouted up into the stairwell in case Gerard was upstairs, but there was no reply. Now that the chip shop was thriving and there was money in the bank, he liked to go to Stamps on the opposite corner of the Market Square or Jim Farrell's in Rafter Street and have a drink with others who ran businesses in the town. As she made her way quickly downstairs, she wished her son were here.

The air in the chip shop was getting even thicker with the fumes. She switched on the fan which began with a clatter and then continued with the loud rhythmic buzzing sounds that often caused her neighbours to complain.

But when the fan proved ineffective and her eyes were still watering from the acrid fumes, the only solution was to open the door to the Market Square and let the smoke out. She hoped that no one she knew might be walking by.

Some months before, when a motion had been passed at the monthly meeting of the Urban District Council denouncing the disturbance caused by businesses such as hers, she had agreed to close the chip shop before the pubs did on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays. But these were not the busy nights. The chip shop did most of its business at the weekend, disturbing the peace enjoyed by the families who lived above their shops and offices.

As she was wiping down the counter-top, she became aware that two people were looking at her through the window. It was June and still bright outside. She ignored whoever was peering in and carried on working, but when she looked up again she saw it was Mr Roderick Wallace, the manager of the Bank of Ireland, whose premises were across the square, and his wife Dolores. Wallace, who had resolutely refused Nancy a loan when she was closing the supermarket and fitting out the chip shop, was prominent among those who complained about it. And at a hop in the tennis club his daughter had made a snide remark to Nancy's two daughters about their mother and her grubby chipper.

Now both Roderick and Dolores were standing in the doorway.

‘The place is as grimy as ever,' Roderick said in a loud voice.

When Nancy glanced up, Dolores addressed her directly.

‘We usually don't pass this way because of the odour,' she said. ‘And this evening it is noxious.'

‘You're in breach of the planning regulations, I'm sure,' Roderick added.

Nancy began cleaning the surface of the narrow ledge that ran along the wall opposite the counter. The air in the shop was better now. In a short time, she would be open for business.

‘If your husband was alive,' Roderick went on, ‘I'm sure he would join with the rest of us in deploring this.'

Nancy stood still for a moment before moving towards the door and brushing past Roderick and Dolores until she was on the footpath.

‘I believe you are to be transferred soon,' she said. ‘And a lot of people in Enniscorthy will be happy to see the end of you both.'

She looked at Dolores and then directed her gaze at Roderick.

As they began to edge away from her, she noticed a group that included her son Gerard observing this scene closely from just across the Square.

‘You can shag off back to Cork,' she added, ‘or wherever it is you come from, the pair of you!'

Roderick turned.

‘I dare you to repeat that.'

‘No problem at all! Shag off back to Cork, the pair of you.'

Later, when Gerard had gone with his friends to Wexford and Miriam said that she wanted an early night, Nancy worried that if people heard about the altercation with the Wallaces, they would surely blame her rather than them. It would be another example of the low tone that she was bringing to the Market Square.

—

Business was slow and she closed for the night a few minutes early. The fan was still making too much noise; she turned it off and kept the door open to get the last fumes out of the shop. When she went outside, she noticed that the chill that had persisted until recently had softened. The night was warm.

With the door locked and the lights dimmed, she was doing a final clean-up when she noticed another two figures, also a man and a woman, at the window. She smiled at the thought that this might be the Wallaces come back to order burgers with onion rings and plenty of ketchup or to request that she repeat once more what she had said to them.

Because it was dark outside, she could barely make out who they were, but when the couple moved away slightly, she saw them perfectly. Although she didn't know their names, she was sure that they lived up by Summerhill in one of the soldiers' cottages. They had a string of children. They were barred from most of the pubs in town. Often, they came in a drunken state to buy chips for three or four nights in a row and then disappeared. She wondered if they stayed at home in between bouts of drinking. When they had alcohol taken, she knew, the wife, whatever her name was, became even more belligerent than the husband. On a busy night, they had no patience, pushing through the crowd, demanding to be served out of turn. A few times, not understanding that she closed early midweek, they had come after the pubs shut demanding service, but it was too late and she had not let them in.

They shaded their eyes with their hands and stood right up against the window. Then they began to knock on the glass to get her attention. She ignored them at first, but they continued to bang on the window even when Nancy turned on the main light and mouthed the word ‘closed'. The man made a sign to her that she should open the door. She shook her head and carried on working.

Still they did not give up.

‘We'll go,' the woman shouted, ‘as soon as we get the chips.'

Nancy pointed to the deep-fryer and put her hands in the air to let them know that there was nothing she could do at this late hour.

‘Will you open up, for fuck's sake,' the woman shouted. ‘We're starving.'

Her husband banged forcefully on the glass.

Nancy turned off the lights at the back of the shop and moved to put the four high stools neatly against the wall. It occurred to her that her neighbours must be listening closely. She wished one of them would appear to give her some support, or that Gerard would come back from Wexford. Since Miriam slept at the back of the house on the top floor, she would be unlikely to hear what was happening. And Nancy would never dream of waking her up to look for help. Miriam, who was getting married in July, would be glad, Nancy thought, to see the end of this house. Laura, her other daughter, almost qualified as a solicitor, could hardly visit from Dublin without making a disparaging remark.

‘Open up outta that, or I'll kick the fuckin' door in,' the woman shouted.

When Nancy went upstairs, she could still hear the sound of fists banging against the glass. Without turning on the light, she went to the front window hoping not to be seen, but the woman, now standing on the roadway, spotted her immediately.

‘Come down outta that, you!'

If she phoned the Guards, she thought, they might want to press charges against the couple. In that case, she would be called to give evidence and the story would be in the local papers and her chipper would be further associated with unruly behaviour and unsavoury people.

She decided to phone Jim Farrell. He would still be in the bar in Rafter Street cleaning up.

He answered the phone on the first ring.

‘I'll be there in one second,' he said.

When Jim appeared, Nancy stood at the window listening as he spoke to the husband and wife. He sounded like a Guard on duty or someone in authority. Since he owned a popular bar, she supposed, he must have learned how to manage a situation like this. Having ordered the man to stop banging on the glass and the woman to stop shouting, he began to talk to them, his voice subdued.

Eventually, the couple walked away. Nancy went down and found Jim who followed her upstairs, but since the living room was being redecorated in preparation for Miriam's wedding, they sat in the kitchen. Jim had a way of not smiling and not saying much that she had come to appreciate. It always took a while for him to become comfortable.

He told her that he had got a promise from the pair that they would not return to harass her.

‘Are they still barred from your pub?'

‘Yes. But they know why and they accept that.'

She heard Gerard on the stairs. He looked into the kitchen for a moment.

‘Any news?' he asked.

‘All quiet,' Jim said.

‘Did you hear about my mother and the bank manager?' Gerard asked.

Jim made clear that he did not know what Gerard was talking about.

‘It was nothing,' Nancy said. ‘They complained about the smell from the oil.'

‘You gave him a lot to think about, anyway,' Gerard said before wishing them both goodnight.

They listened to him going up the stairs and heard him in the bathroom. Jim signalled to her without saying anything that if he went back to his own house she might soon follow. She smiled.

‘I'll see you in a while,' he whispered.

She had been having an affair with Jim for almost a year now, although she wondered if ‘affair' was really the word. They had never appeared in public together. But sometimes, when the chip shop and the pub had closed, Jim would phone, and Nancy would cross the Market Square and slip into Rafter Street and find the side door to Jim's quarters above the pub on the latch. It was strange, Nancy thought, for two people in their mid-forties to behave like furtive teenagers, but soon that was going to change.

She still liked the idea that no one, no one at all, knew about them, and no one, she believed, even guessed.

Usually, when she had left his bed, she would sneak out of his house, with him checking beforehand that there was no one on the street. She was careful. Anyone who saw her might ask themselves what Nancy Sheridan was doing walking around the town of Enniscorthy as the cathedral bell rang out three o'clock in the morning. And she tried not to make a sound as she ascended the stairs to her own bedroom.

She remembered leaving her own house late on Christmas Day and finding the Market Square empty, knowing that Jim would, once more, be waiting for her upstairs in the house on Rafter Street.

She found him sitting that night in an armchair with a gin and tonic poured for himself and a vodka and orange juice with plenty of ice on a small table beside the other armchair. She noticed a plate of mince pies. They spoke casually for a while, even discussing the weather and the quality of the Christmas dinner in Jim's cousin's house in Monart. She saw that he was blushing and looking at the floor and then glancing nervously at her.

‘It struck me,' he said and then stopped and sipped his drink.

‘It struck me . . .' he began again and sighed and looked at the floor. ‘You know, I've been thinking.'

‘What?'

‘That it wouldn't be good for you if anyone noticed you coming here.'

He was going to end it, she saw. He would use his own concern for her reputation as an excuse. She determined that she would leave as soon as she could. When she sipped her drink, it was clear that he had put too much vodka into it.

‘I know you're very independent. You're independent and have your own way of doing things.' Jim was looking towards one of the tall windows that gave onto the street. It occurred to Nancy that it might be best if she stood up now.

‘It struck me . . .' he began again. ‘I thought it would be nice if we were actually living together.'

Nancy set about detaching one of the mince pies from its silver casing.

‘I have been thinking about it for a while,' Jim said. ‘I thought, if you liked, we could become a bit more serious.'

He sighed again and stirred the ice in his drink with his finger.

‘I suppose by agreeing that we wanted, you know, wanted . . .'

He looked at her as if she might finish the sentence for him.

‘Wanted?'

‘I suppose eventually to see each other more.'

She winced when she took a gulp of the vodka.

‘What's wrong?' he asked.

‘Nothing. You just put too much vodka in the drink.'

‘Do you need –?'

‘No, it's fine.'

‘I'm going the wrong way about this,' he said.

‘I'm listening.'

‘I know it's a bit unusual because we have always known each other. It's not like we're twenty-one.'

He was speaking as though to himself.

‘What do you think?' he asked.

‘Well, I'm not twenty-one anyway,' she said.

‘Nor me,' he replied.

She nodded and held his gaze.

‘I'd like to know that we are both serious,' he continued.

‘Jim, could you spell out what you mean?'

‘We'll talk about it another time. But I think you get my drift.'

She came to his house over the next few nights. They discussed arrangements they might make, working out how a widow aged forty-six with three children, the youngest almost twenty, might marry a bachelor of the same age whom she had known all of her life and who had, during a summer many years before, been in love with her best friend who had let him down badly by going back to America, abandoning him and Enniscorthy without warning.

‘I can't imagine getting married in the cathedral with the whole town looking at me. I am not sure the children would welcome the sight of their mother in a wedding dress.'

‘We'll suit ourselves,' Jim had replied. ‘We won't do anything we don't want to do.'

That was as far as they had got with the arrangements when Miriam, Nancy's elder daughter, announced her engagement to Matt Wadding on New Year's Eve, with plans to marry in the summer.

‘Let her have her big day,' Jim had said. ‘Let them get married first. We'll wait until they're settled. We'll tell no one about our plans until they are well married.'

Once Miriam set the date of her wedding for the last week in July, Jim declared that it would be only decent for her mother and himself to wait until September to make any announcement.

‘No one will believe us,' Nancy said.

‘They'll get used to it quickly enough.'

It was strange, Nancy thought, that it did not strike Gerard that his mother and Jim were actually making plans to marry, even though Gerard often went to Jim's pub when Jim might not be busy so they could discuss the day's news. Even finding his mother and Jim together in the kitchen after midnight did not stir his curiosity.

‘I suppose it is too strange,' Nancy said.

‘Gerard is smart enough,' Jim said, ‘but he knows only what he sees.'

The day she and Jim were married, Nancy thought, would be a happy day for her. But the day when word began to spread in the town that she had become engaged would also be something to enjoy. Jim was solid; people liked him. In recent years, his pub had been doing a good trade. It was where all the young teachers and solicitors and bank clerks drank now. And Jim had managed to make his new clientele welcome without losing any of his old customers. He had a barman, Shane Nolan, who had been with him for years. Nancy knew how Shane and his wife Colette looked after Jim.

‘You'd be lost without them, but I wonder if they won't be a bit put out by the idea of a new woman coming into the house.'

‘Shane takes everything in his stride.'

—

As Nancy left Jim's house on the night she had called him to help get rid of the boisterous couple, she calculated how long it would be before her life changed. In ten weeks, they would be able to announce their engagement. She imagined herself at eleven o'clock or twelve o'clock mass in early September, people watching her in the church. Maybe she would be wearing a new suit, something she might have bought in Switzers or Brown Thomas's in Dublin, with a hat, perhaps one that had a light veil in front. People would congratulate her when the mass was over as they gathered in front of the cathedral. She wasn't sure what sort of engagement ring she wanted. But something plain. Since Miriam's was so beautiful and dazzling, she did not want her daughter to think that she was competing with her.

She stood on the street for a moment, hearing Jim lock the door from inside. It occurred to her how strangely time moved on the nights when she saw Jim. Just now, as she decided to take the long way around to the Market Square, her altercation with Roderick Wallace and his wife seemed like a long time ago, as did the arrival of the husband and wife demanding that she reopen to serve them. The time she spent with Jim made her feel lighter and happier. When George died, she had resigned herself to being a widow. She sometimes sat up late in the kitchen dreading the prospect of the night ahead, the fitful sleep.

When she had made her way along Castle Street and was at the top of Slaney Street, she realised that she did not want to go home yet. She was enjoying the solitary walk through the deserted town. For all of her life, everyone had known her. There was no mystery. And now, should a car pass or a lone stroller appear, they would have no idea where she was coming from, what she was thinking about, what plans she had.

It seemed unlikely to have Jim as a partner in subterfuge. He was so plain-spoken and straightforward. From the beginning, she had wanted to ask him if these encounters were something that really had begun casually or if he had been thinking about meeting her like this, even planning it, for some time.

She remembered a Sunday in the summer many years ago just before she had married George when she had gone with Jim and Eilis Lacey, who was home from America after her sister died, to the strand at Cush. Jim was in love with Eilis, and George with Nancy. They were not just four friends; they were two couples. Did Jim ever think of her back then? She would like to ask him when he got the idea that they could be together. It would be reassuring if he told her that he had always noticed her, always thought of her. Or if there was a day when he had seen her on the street, or in her car, and had come to view her in a new way.

Even though he was shy, he was also confident, sure of himself. He had a way of standing apart without causing anyone to dislike him.

She walked down Castle Hill and into Castle Street. If Jim was interested in settling down, she wondered why he didn't look for someone younger, someone glamorous. She had put on too much weight since George died. As she passed the Cotton Tree, she resolved that she would go on a diet. She had kept some magazines with articles on how to get her figure back.

—

In the morning, she heard Miriam letting the decorators in, and then the sound of Gerard's voice as he made some joke with them. By the time she got up, Miriam had left for work and Gerard must have gone out somewhere.

Because they expected that many people would call with presents in the weeks before Miriam's wedding, and since the main room over the chip shop had become shabby, then it needed to be redecorated. Miriam and Laura, her younger daughter, had insisted that every single item of furniture in the room be thrown out. And instead of wallpaper, they said, the room should be painted. And instead of a patterned carpet, there should be a simple grey one.

‘Everything must go,' Laura had said.

‘Even the television?' Nancy asked.

‘Especially the television and the awful stand it's on,' Miriam had replied.

‘We have had to live for years with the place half-falling down,' Laura said.

‘It wasn't half-falling down.'

‘And the smell from the burgers and the onion rings gets into my wardrobe and into my clothes. I swear it's in my shoes.'

‘It pays the bills.'

‘Great,' Miriam said. ‘Then it can pay for a van-load of nice new furniture that we've seen in Arnotts. And the walls are going to be painted white, or a sort of off-white.'

‘And we bought prints that we are going to have framed,' Laura added. ‘And the windows are going to be cleaned for once. And we've found an air-extractor for the shop that might actually work.'

‘You've everything planned,' Nancy said.

No matter what day it was, there was always something to be done in the chip shop. Once she and Jim were married, she thought, Gerard could collect orders, deal with invoices and go to the bank. At the weekend, he was always by her side in the chip shop as well as a girl called Brudge Foley, whose mother had been in school with Nancy. She worked in the shop on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights. On Saturdays, they stayed open until two o'clock in the morning, although Nancy had agreed with her neighbours that they would close at one.

She would love to move out of the town to a place where people could not see her every time she came out of her own door. Helena Hennessy across the Square had moved to a nice bungalow near Davidstown. It was she who had let Nancy know that there was a site for sale at Lucas Park.

Nancy had almost put in a bid for that site, but then realised that she could not do so without consulting Jim. She had not even mentioned her plan that they would live outside the town, leaving the house in the Market Square to Gerard and perhaps renting out the floors over Jim's pub. It would be more private for them, she thought; sitting in a garden in the summer would be like something out of a dream.

What she loved doing most now in the morning was making tea and toast and fetching the artist's sketchbook that she had bought in Dublin with some rulers and plastic triangles and T-shapes and coloured pencils, and making a plan to scale of the house she hoped to build.

Since Miriam and her husband were going to live in Wexford, a half-hour's drive away, and Gerard would also be living locally, she would have to think about having a house where future grandchildren could come regularly. She made space in the plan for a big kitchen where she could cook while the children watched television.

When the doorbell rang, she looked at the clock and saw that it was almost eleven thirty. She had become lost in measurements and drawings. The morning was practically gone. There were several deliveries due and she went downstairs in the expectation of seeing one of her usual suppliers. Instead, there was a woman at the door who broke into a laugh when she saw her.

‘I hope you don't mind me calling like this.'

The voice was unmistakably that of Eilis Lacey. And when Eilis lowered her gaze and lifted it again, Nancy saw that she had not changed. Her face had become thinner and she seemed taller. She was more composed. That was all.

‘Come in! Come in!'

She explained about the decorators, telling Eilis also about the wedding.

‘It seems like yesterday, or maybe it doesn't, when you were at my wedding. And now Miriam is getting married. I wasn't expecting it when she got engaged. They both have jobs in Wexford. They are very sensible. I wouldn't be surprised if they'd signed up for a pension scheme already.'

They had ascended the stairs and were standing outside the door of the living room. Nancy was worried that she was talking too much. She felt as though she had to explain herself to Eilis. When she realised that, really, she didn't, she laughed. But the laugh was too loud. She led her visitor into the kitchen at the back of the house, quickly putting the sketchbook and the ruler and the pencils away.

‘And how long are you home for?' she asked when they were sitting at the kitchen table. She looked at Eilis's arms, bare in her short-sleeved dress, and observed how smooth the skin was. And then she noticed her slim wrists and her manicured fingernails. She studied her face again: Eilis did not seem younger than her years, but fresh and unworn nonetheless. Her eyes were bright; there were very few wrinkles on her neck. Nancy was examining her so closely that she realised she had not been listening. She had to ask Eilis again how long she was staying.

‘I'll probably go back at the end of August.'

‘You'll be here for the wedding then. Miriam's wedding is next month. It would be so great if you could come!'

They spoke for a while about their children. For a moment, Nancy was going to ask Eilis about the man she had married in America, but then decided to wait and see if Eilis would bring up his name. She thought it strange that her friend did not mention him.

‘How is your mother?' Nancy asked.

‘She speaks her mind much more than before. It takes getting used to. Maybe it's a good sign. I don't know.'

In asking after Mrs Lacey, Nancy had thought Eilis would say that her mother was as well as could be expected for a woman of eighty, or some sort of customary answer. She was surprised by the tone of exasperation in her reply.

They spoke of teachers they remembered and dances they had attended. But they did not refer to the summer Eilis had returned when she had been two years in America, the summer when it was clear to everyone how much in love she and Jim Farrell were, the summer that ended when Eilis returned without warning to America. Jim told no one what had transpired, and Eilis's mother, it was said, did not appear in the street until after Christmas that year. But Nancy had finally found out that Eilis had been married all along, she actually had a husband in Brooklyn. She had told no one, not even her own mother.

When she discovered the truth, Nancy went through every encounter she'd had with Eilis that summer. She recalled Eilis at her wedding, with Jim as her partner, Jim who believed he had found the love of his life, encouraged by Nancy and George to propose marriage to Eilis before she went back to America.

Nancy was pregnant, she remembered, when she met Mrs Lacey for the first time after Eilis's departure. She was buying a newspaper in Godfrey's close to the supermarket when Mrs Lacey came in. Because the interior of the shop was dark, Nancy thought she could pretend that she had not seen her.

‘Are you avoiding me, Nancy Sheridan?' Mrs Lacey had asked. ‘Is the whole town still avoiding me?'

‘Oh God, I didn't see you, Mrs Lacey.'

‘Well, I saw you, Nancy. And maybe the next time we meet you can work out a way of seeing me too.'

She walked out of Godfrey's with an air of grievance.

—

Eilis was looking at her now, puzzled.

‘Nancy, you're not listening to me!'

‘What did you say?'

‘I said you must be excited about the wedding, but you are miles away.'

‘I am excited,' she said. ‘When George died, the only thing that kept me going was the children. Seeing Miriam happy and settled is a great relief. And Laura is going to be a solicitor.'

Eilis's dress, she thought, was cotton, but it was a heavier cotton than she had ever seen before, and the pale yellow colour was new to her as well, but the strangest part of it was the waist, how the waist was held in by a belt in the same cotton and the same colour. She was tempted to ask Eilis what her waist measurement was and how she managed to keep her figure.

‘What are you thinking about?' Eilis asked.

‘I was trying to stop myself asking you how you keep your figure.'

‘I have two sisters-in-law and they spend their lives going on diets. If I put on an ounce, they notice.'

‘I really need to lose weight before the wedding,' Nancy said. ‘But it's only five weeks away now. I should have started in the New Year. Can you really come to the wedding?'

‘I would love to.'

‘The reception is in Whites Barn. I hope it will be a great day.'

Nancy told her then about the chip shop, surprised that Eilis's mother did not seem to have mentioned it, and about Gerard's interest in taking over the business and perhaps opening another shop in Wexford or Gorey, or maybe Courtown in the summer. Eilis, in turn, asked her about the best place to buy a new fridge and washing machine and cooker for her mother's house.

‘She hasn't done a single thing to the kitchen.'

As she was getting ready to leave, Eilis seemed to hesitate for a moment before she asked, ‘How is Jim Farrell?'

‘Oh, he's fine, fine.'

‘I mean, did he ever . . . ?' She stopped for a second.

‘Marry? No, he didn't.'

Eilis nodded and looked thoughtful.

‘But he's doing a strong line with someone in Dublin,' Nancy said. ‘Or so I believe. He's keeping it quiet, but it's hard to keep anything to yourself down here.'

Eilis indicated that she was well aware of that.

Nancy wondered why she had just made up this story about Jim. It would have been better just to have said he wasn't married.

When Eilis had gone, Nancy felt a sudden resentment against her for how she had treated them all, never giving them any explanation of why she had to go back to America, fooling them for that whole summer.

She went back to the kitchen and noticed, as though for the first time, how shabby it looked. All the Formica was chipped and there were dirty plates and utensils on the draining board. The window needed to be cleaned.

Nancy took the plates and busily set about washing them as though that would make any difference. She wished that Eilis had come back in a year or two after she and Jim were married. She would like Eilis to visit her in her new bungalow, sit with her in the bright kitchen she was dreaming about.

It occurred to her then that she should not have asked Eilis to the wedding without consulting Jim. She had been so flustered at Eilis's appearance at her door that she had said too much, too quickly. She thought she should not tell Jim immediately; instead, she would allude casually to Eilis's visit and then judge his response. She tried to think where she might seat Eilis. She must look at the table plan again. There would be many at the wedding who would remember Eilis Lacey and want to see her. She would stand out. Everyone would notice how well she looked, and how glamorous. Nancy was sure of that.

She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror on the landing. In future, she resolved, she should make an effort to dress more carefully during the day, not just put on anything she found in the wardrobe that still fitted her. Eilis must have observed how badly dressed she was and the pair of old house slippers she had on. She would go upstairs now and put on something decent.