iii

Jim wanted to call in her direction, loud enough to make her look over so that he could be sure it really was Eilis Lacey. He was almost certain that she had seen him because she had suddenly turned her face away as if to avoid his gaze, but not before he had caught a glimpse of her.

People who knew the story of his time with her came to the bar regularly. Surely someone might have told him she was back! He knew her mother; he often saw Mrs Lacey on the street. In the first while after Eilis's sudden departure, they had barely acknowledged each other, but nowadays she gave him a friendly smile when they met. And Martin, of course. Martin liked coming into the bar early in the evening. But he never got into a sustained conversation with anyone and he never stayed for long. Jim could not think when he had last had a conversation with Martin.

Shane Nolan was behind the bar. Andy, the new young barman, was collecting glasses. Since this was Friday, it was busy. For the last hour of opening, Jim worked hard, wishing, as he always did, that there was some way of stopping customers from ordering rounds of drinks in the five minutes before closing time. Soon he would have to stand over them demanding they finish up, or he would have to restrain young Andy from snatching half-drunk pint glasses from them.

Andy was impatient and often cheeky and Jim found him difficult to get used to. He would not work on Saturdays and Sundays until the evening as he was involved in rugby and soccer as well as hurling.

‘He brings a whole new crowd into the bar,' Shane said. ‘We can't stop him playing.'

‘I don't mind him asking me for time off,' Jim said, ‘but I don't like him telling me, like he was the one in charge.'

‘You can trust him with keys and cash and that's the main thing about him.'

‘How do you know?'

‘Do you think I would have recommended him if it wasn't true?'

‘But how do you know?'

‘I know all belonging to him in the Duffry Gate.'

—

The pub Jim had taken over from his father had been a quiet place, with a regular trade, busy at the weekends. When women began to go out to bars in the late 1960s, a few places in the town had added a lounge, putting in a carpet and better seats. Jim had thought about this for a while, even had plans drawn up. And then he didn't do it. The establishment thus remained untouched since the 1920s when his grandfather had bought it. Some of the woodwork, he thought, might be even older.

Slowly, the clientele changed. A few teachers began to drink in his pub during the week and then it became their local. On weekend nights, Jim had to reserve space for his regular customers near the front door. Within a short time, the more recent arrivals knew that they must not invade this territory, no matter how crowded the bar was.

Now, since Jim had opened up a space at the back that had been unused for years, young sports enthusiasts who were friends of Andy's had become regulars. Jim took Thursdays off, driving to Dublin in the morning, but always back by nine for the last few hours of business.

—

On the night he saw Eilis Lacey, when the last customers had gone and Shane had left early, Jim decided to ask Andy to clean the place and lock up.

Jim went upstairs and sat in an armchair in the living room. He made a sandwich with ingredients that Colette, Shane's wife, had left for him. He had noticed that she did not come to the pub as much as she used to. She still made him a cake of brown bread every few days but gave it to Shane to take to him.

Before, Colette would appear, if she could, at a time when Jim was upstairs. He would hear her shouting his name, having opened the door from the bar that led into the hallway. She would have tea with him, always pretending that she was actually on her way somewhere else and could not stay for long.

She was, he saw, like a player moving up a field with a ball, waiting for an opportunity, as she moved the conversation from the ordinary, from enquiries about Andy's mother who had taken over the cleaning of the house, to news about her children or people in the town, to talk about Jim himself, until that led, inevitably, to a discussion of his bachelor status. She wanted to encourage him to find a wife.

‘Who would have me? I'm nearly fifty years old. And how would I meet anyone? I'm in the bar until midnight five or six nights a week.'

‘There are plenty of women who would be delighted to meet you.'

‘Name one of them!'

He stood up and stretched, making clear to her that she should go.

‘You see, there isn't anyone,' he said.

He liked how she made no reference to his failed love affairs, the ones she knew about. She tried to give the impression that she was just making conversation. He would leave it to her to decide when this topic should be mentioned no more.

The next time she brought up the subject even before he had asked her to sit down.

‘I've thought of someone,' she said. ‘You are not to laugh. And you are not to dismiss it out of hand. I have thought about it and I have a name.'

‘Have you discussed this with Shane?'

‘Certainly not! I never tell him anything.'

‘Tell me the name then.'

‘I'm afraid if I say it, it won't sound right. I'd prefer to write it down.'

‘I'll fetch you a piece of paper. Just to get this over with.'

‘I already have it written down. It's here.'

She handed him a piece of paper which he unfolded.

When he saw the name, he looked sharply at her.

‘I've known her all my life.'

‘I was sure you were going to say that.'

‘We had every chance, but neither of us had any interest.'

‘You're older now, and wiser, and so is she.'

‘Why would she even consider it?'

‘Jim Farrell, look at you! You are handsome, you are kind, you are hard-working. She is a good person and you are lonely.'

‘Is that enough?'

‘I have never heard anyone say a bad word about her. Her children are grown up. She really is lovely, Jim. She has a lovely smile. And she's had a very hard time.'

‘And you want me to marry her? Does Shane know this?'

‘I told you already he doesn't. No one knows. I just think you're sad here on your own. If you sit here waiting, you'll never find the right person.'

‘Is Nancy Sheridan the right person?'

‘She's perfect.'

Colette did him the favour of not mentioning Nancy's name again. And he put no thought into it for a while.

He'd found himself thinking about some of the young women who had recently started to come to the bar, teachers and bank clerks. He worried that he looked at them too closely when they came to order a drink. Now he began to think about Nancy Sheridan. Once, years before, the time Eilis Lacey was home, they had gone for a swim on a Sunday. He remembered Nancy changing into her swimsuit, even though most of his attention was on Eilis. He had an image of her starting to dry herself with a towel, the goosepimples on her skin, and her pulling down the straps of the bathing suit.

She was older now. She had put on weight. He thought about what it would be like if she was in the room, slowly undressing, and then coming to bed, turning towards him as she pulled the sheets around them.

At night when he had finished work, he imagined her in the living room waiting for him, everything tidy, the curtains drawn, the fire lighting.

What satisfied him was the knowledge that this was not a mad idea. The young women who came to the bar had no interest in him and never would have. But it was possible that Colette was right, that, if it came into Nancy Sheridan's mind that he was thinking about her, it was not impossible that she would respond favourably.

A few times, when he saw Nancy on the street, he stayed talking to her for longer than ever before. She knew that he was on her side against the residents of the Market Square about the chip shop and that he had spoken in support of her at the Credit Union when she had sought a loan. So she had, he noticed, felt free one day when they met on the corner of Rafter Street and the Square to tell him how hard it was to deal with some of the drunken customers.

‘You ask them if they want salt and vinegar and when they say yes, you give them what they asked for, and then, when it's too late, they announce that they didn't want salt and vinegar at all. And then they call you names you wouldn't believe. And they won't pay. And they won't go home.'

As he listened, he realised that there was one thing he could say now, and if he said it, then it might be noted by her. He wondered whether, if it had been any other day, he might have held back, but by that time he had already spoken.

‘If you ever needed any help at night with troublesome customers, you could give me a shout in the bar. Even if it's late, I'm usually up. I'd be down right away.'

He saw her taking this in. For a second, it seemed as though she was ready to dismiss it as a casual gesture of goodwill, but then she joined her hands and lifted them to her mouth. She looked worried.

‘I often wish there was someone I could call.'

He felt as though he might never get another chance to make himself clear.

‘I often think of you there on your own,' he began, and then, more firmly, said, ‘I'd be down like a flash if you phoned.'

She didn't blush, or smile, or look puzzled.

‘I will phone you then,' she had said.

—

He switched on one of the lamps now in the large living room whose windows faced onto the street. He was glad that he had left Andy to clean up. As soon as he had seen her on the street, he had wanted to come up here and be on his own. He was sure it was Eilis Lacey. If he had spotted her one or two seconds earlier, they could have locked eyes. He could not think what might have happened then. Would he have crossed the street and spoken to her?

She had often come into his mind since he had seen her last, and that was more than twenty years ago. And he wanted to believe that she must have thought of him too. Perhaps not every day, but surely sometimes.

In the weeks after she had left him a note to say that she was going back to Brooklyn and was setting out that very morning, he had expected to hear from her. A longer letter maybe, or a phone call. He had even imagined in the days after her abrupt departure that she might have turned back at some point before embarking, that she was waiting in some hotel in Dublin or Cork or Liverpool and that she would appear in Enniscorthy and say she was sorry about the note, she had panicked, but she was here again and they could be together.

He felt that if only he had guessed she was leaving he would have been able to convince her to stay. He went over the things he might have said. He would try not to be too insistent in case that put her off. But he was sure that he would have been able to convince her that she would be happier with him even if they had to leave the town or even the country. But he never got that chance. He never heard from her again.

And then, about a month after Eilis's departure, Jim's mother, on passing the shop owned by a woman known as Nettles Kelly, found Miss Kelly herself standing at the door. Miss Kelly informed Mrs Farrell that her cousin Madge Kehoe in Brooklyn knew for a fact that Eilis Lacey was a married woman.

‘She is married to an Italian, if you don't mind. I don't know where she met him, but I know where she married him in some hall in Brooklyn. And then she came home, all rigged out like an American. And I believe that her benighted mother didn't even know she was married. Poor Jim. That is all I have to say. But I hope he has learned his lesson now.'

When his mother appeared, Jim thought that something must have happened to his father. Even though he was alone behind the bar, she demanded that he come upstairs with her to hear what she had to say.

‘Imagine doing that!' Jim's mother said when she had told him what she had heard from Miss Kelly. ‘Leading you on, and she a married woman! Well, I'm glad she took herself off.'

The idea that Eilis was married made no sense to him. Why did she not say? Why did he know nothing about her life in America? He thought back to an evening on the strand in Curracloe when he had spoken to her about himself in a way that he had never spoken to anyone else. And she had paid attention as though it mattered to her. But it was true, he thought, that she had never told him in any detail what her life was like. Because he had believed that she was going to stay with him, it did not seem important. When she was with him, he was sure, she was not thinking of anyone else. Or was he wrong about that? He could not believe that she had set out to fool him. He wished he could have talked to her, or that she would write to him and he would write back. And then, as the months went by, he realised that she had gone and would not be returning.

In the meantime, rumours spread in the town. Davy Roche, who worked in the bar then, was the first to let him know that he had heard about a big row between Eilis and Jim in the middle of the Market Square one night. Soon his mother came with the same story to be followed by another in which Eilis had left because her husband had come from America to get her. It was incredible, he thought, that it took time to convince even his mother that there was no truth in any of the stories, except the one in which Eilis had gone back to her husband when Miss Kelly threatened to tell the whole town that she was married. That was all he knew and all he would ever know, he supposed, about what had happened.

It would be difficult to be sure what to say to Eilis if they met. She would have found out from someone that he had never married, that he ran a successful business, that he was still liked and respected in the town. Her mother would have kept her informed if no one else had, or maybe even Martin.

He heard Andy locking up downstairs and went into the kitchen and got a beer from the fridge. Recently, he had decided to stop having a few drinks on his own at the end of the day. It made him morose. But he would have a drink now as he went over in his mind what Eilis had looked like as she passed on the other side of the street.

He hated how the rumours had spread and the relish with which they were recounted to him. Behind the bar, he was a prisoner. Anyone could say what they liked to him. He would never be able to predict when it would come. It could be a lone customer on a bar-stool after a few drinks saying in an insinuating tone, ‘I hear that Lacey one went back to America.' On one crowded night, someone he had never seen before, as he was gathering his change from the counter, muttered, ‘I'd say you're better off without that Eilis Lacey. She was damaged goods to start with.'

Eventually, people forgot about it, found other things to gossip about. His parents, by now, were living in Glenbrien in a house his mother had inherited from an old aunt. He had the floors above the pub to himself. His brother Vincent was in Australia and his two sisters were married in Dublin. His mother visited sometimes after Eilis went back to America, but she made matters worse by looking at him sorrowfully and saying that the main rooms over the pub could do with a woman's touch.

‘You will find someone else. When I met your father he had been let down like that too. It happens to most people. It is part of life.'

—

He could not take time off from the bar to go to the big dance in Wexford on a Saturday night and he did not like the crowd in the Athenaeum in Enniscorthy. So, the summer after Eilis left, Jim began to drive to Courtown on a Sunday night. It was better not to go with a group. If he wanted to leave, he could slip away. He kept his hair tidy and that summer he wore a good suit and a white shirt and a striped tie. He arrived early and stood at the side watching, knowing that the real crush would not come until the pubs had closed.

He worried that he might look odd standing on his own. He liked some of the women he saw, but they tended to be with a partner, or in company. A few times, he asked a girl to dance, but he did not meet anyone whom he wanted to see again.

He wished he could relax, just enjoy the atmosphere, as others did. He was more than twenty miles away from Enniscorthy. Occasionally he saw someone from home, but most of the time he was a stranger here and that suited him.

Slowly, he got to see that not being with a group really was an impediment to meeting a girl. Crossing the hall at a lull in the music to ask a complete stranger to dance was not as customary as it had been when he had started to go to dances. A few times, a girl turned away as she saw him approaching. A few times also, in exasperation, he left the dance early, drove back to Enniscorthy, happier on his own in the car than standing against a wall in the ballroom in Courtown.

Just as the season was ending, he met Mai Whitney. She was with a group who had come in from the rugby club in Gorey, some of whom he knew. He tried to work out if she was with a boyfriend, but she seemed not to be attached. The problem was how to get her attention. He thought of sidling up in the hope that one of the fellows from the rugby club would introduce him to her, but that would be too forward.

There were only three or four dances left that night. If he didn't make a move soon, the lights would come up and the National Anthem would be played and he would still not have met her. She was laughing and talking with two other young women.

‘Excuse me,' he approached without planning what he was going to say. ‘I know you're with your friends, but I would like to . . .'

She agreed to dance with him before he could finish. He wondered if she would stay with him for the next set as well when the lights would go down and the music become slower. In Courtown, as in most places, the last fifteen minutes were devoted to close dancing. It would be easier to talk if the music was quieter.

He wondered what she might say if he offered to drive her home. She lived beyond Coolgreany, she said, and worked in a chemist's shop in Gorey. He got the impression that she did not have her own car. A few times, when he looked, he saw that her friends were watching her. He supposed that she was planning to go home with them. As the evening came to an end, however, he discovered that she presumed he was going to drive her home.

In the car, he liked how she kept the conversation going, asking him about the pub and trying to work out exactly where it was situated in Enniscorthy. Her friends and her two brothers, who had also been at the dance, would definitely know the pub, she said, as they spent time in Enniscorthy, but for the moment she would not tell them anything about him.

‘You'll be the mystery man,' she said. ‘It'll drive them mad.'

It was arranged that he would collect her at her house the following Sunday and they would go to the dance in Courtown again.

Over the subsequent months, they went to rugby dances in Gorey and Arklow, going as far as Delgany as the winter came in. During the week, when he thought about Mai, he wondered how she might fit in to life running a pub. She would hardly serve behind the counter, but then his mother never did either. On one of the evenings, he told her this as casually as he could, so she would know that he would not expect any wife of his to stand behind the counter.

When they were together, he thought of what they would do in the car when the night ended. After a few dates, she agreed that he could pause some distance from the bungalow where she lived with her parents and her brothers so they would have time in the dark.

He suggested that he would collect her some evening and drive her to Enniscorthy to see the pub and his living quarters. He watched her taking in the large living room and wondered if he should ask her if she also wanted to see the rooms on the floor above, but since they were bedrooms, he thought he might be moving too quickly. But once they had spent some time together on the sofa, he was on the point of suggesting that she might stay the night and he could drive her to work in the morning. Before he could, however, Mai said that her parents would be worried about her and she would have to go.

Eventually, she did agree to stay over, having taken a Monday morning off work. But in the living room she seemed less friendly than usual. She sat in one of the armchairs while he waited for her to join him on the sofa. He poured more vodka for her.

‘Don't think filling up my glass is going to help you,' she said.

‘Help me?'

‘I know what you're thinking.'

He was tempted to reply that she was right. But one hour went by and then another. He listened to the story of the family who owned the chemist's shop and their three daughters. She then told him about a cousin of hers brought up on a remote farm near Tinahely. When he patted the space beside him on the sofa to suggest that she might think of moving there to be beside him, she shrugged.

‘I don't know what sort of person you think I am.'

She slept in the bed beside him wearing her slip. In the morning, when he had to be in the bar to take deliveries, he left her sleeping. Later, when he drove her home, she asked to be let out at a friend's house in Gorey. He realised that she must have told her parents she was staying there.

While he was returning to Enniscorthy, a single moment from the previous evening stayed in his mind. She had come back from the bathroom and said, ‘I would have that bathroom completely redone.' She was not aware how closely he was listening. She did not seem to understand what this sounded like to him. It was its very casualness that made it appear all the more significant. She had let him know that she was imagining this as a place where she would one day live.

Because he worked on Friday and Saturday nights, he could not see her as much as he wanted. It was a pity, he thought, that her parents did not have a phone in their house. Sometimes he called her at work but she was often busy. He asked her if she might agree to come away with him for a week, or even a few days. They could go to Kerry when the days brightened or even think of crossing with the car from Rosslare to Fishguard and going to Cardiff or Bristol, as his parents had once done.

‘I'd love a holiday,' she said. ‘But maybe we should think of going to Spain. Somewhere with brilliant nightlife, and everywhere open late. And we could be on the beach in the day. Swims in between cocktails. Maybe we could get a crowd together.'

He had no problem with a crowd, as long as he and Mai were sharing a room.

—

Jim liked the bar at seven or eight o'clock midweek when there were only one or two customers nursing a drink. He would read the newspaper or do nothing at all. If someone wanted to start a conversation, he enjoyed that too, especially with regulars. One evening when the bar was quiet, a young man came in on his own whom Jim had met briefly in Courtown with Mai. He was a friend of her brother's.

‘I'm just killing time,' he said. ‘I have to meet someone in a while to get a second-hand television and I'm driving back home so I'd better just have a soda water and lime.'

They spoke for a while about the various dancehalls.

‘We don't see you much any more,' the man said. ‘How long is it since you and Mai split up?'

Jim stopped himself saying anything in reply. He could easily have told the man that he and Mai had been at a rugby dance in Greystones just a few nights before. And on the way home Mai had responded enthusiastically when he had suggested that she come some Sunday to have tea with his parents.

‘She's a right goer, Mai is,' the man went on. ‘She's made us all promise to come with her and the new boyfriend to the dance in Wexford some Saturday. He's from down that way. They go every week. There's a full bar which is more than you can say for Courtown. I think the days of asking a girl if she'd like a mineral are over. It's gin and tonic or vodka and Britvic. That's the way it's gone now. Did you break it off or did she?'

Jim smiled and shrugged.

‘Ah, we both . . .'

He nodded his head in resignation.

‘That's the best way,' the man said before finishing his soda water and lime and taking his leave.

—

The following Saturday night, Jim asked Davy Roche if he could look after the bar for the last hour and lock up. Even though the bar was busy, he thought it was best to go early and be in Wexford before half eleven. Someone had told him that it was becoming hard to get into the dance in the old town hall after closing time in the bars.

There was a long line outside. He was the only one who was alone. He looked around, worried that Mai and her boyfriend, whoever he was, and all their friends might appear. She would have a right to ask him what he was doing on a Saturday night in Wexford queueing to get into the dance when he had told her that he could never get away on a Saturday.

Once he was inside, he made for the narrow balcony upstairs. The music was loud; the band was much better than the ones that played Courtown. This band had a brass section as well as a backing chorus. But the main attraction, he saw, was the bar. He smiled as he watched a fellow trying to carry two full pint glasses and two smaller spirit glasses through the crowd.

He was glad that he saw no one he knew. People from Enniscorthy were wary of travelling to Wexford because of the drink-driving laws. On the balcony, he found a stool and moved it to the front. From here, he had a full view of the dance floor below. It was still early enough for all the music to be fast. When it slowed down, as he was sure it would later, the combination of musicians would make a beautiful sound.

But he would not stay that long. He would stay only to see if Mai was here and who she was with. In all their conversations, she had never once mentioned Wexford. It was too far south for her crowd. They seemed more comfortable in Wicklow or Arklow if there was nothing on in Gorey or Courtown.

Nobody except him was sitting alone without a drink, staring at the dancers. Everyone was lively, laughing with their friends, pushing their way to the bar. Even though there were crowds standing at the edges of the hall, the dance floor itself was not packed. He could pick couples out easily and follow them as they moved around. People appeared to know each other. In between dances, there was no stampede of men across the floor looking for partners. The atmosphere was relaxed and good-humoured. The band wasn't just belting out versions of recent hits, but playing jazz numbers and then shifting into swing to the delight of some of the dancers.

And then he saw Mai Whitney walking confidently onto the dance floor accompanied by a tall thin man with long sideburns and a brown suede jacket. Jim knew how well she danced and he watched her now with a partner who had the same sense of rhythm. Other dancers made space for them as they began by putting on a display, jiving in perfect harmony, each movement enacted as though they had practised.

He could see why he had noticed Mai the first night in Courtown. Anyone would have singled her out. Now, in a light blue dress that was held in at the waist by a white plastic belt, she looked radiant. Every time she twirled, she laughed. She could be like this, he knew, when she had one or two drinks, but she could also liven up if she liked a song or a melody.

He waited. He wanted to see if she would, at the next dance, come out onto the floor with someone else. She could be with others and they could be choosing dance partners without it meaning anything much. But the customer in the bar had mentioned a new boyfriend and Jim knew that he was fooling himself if he thought her dance partner was not her boyfriend.

For a slow dance, they came out on the floor again and moved close. He watched them for a while and then he left and drove back to Enniscorthy.

The next evening as they were travelling north towards Wicklow for a rugby club dance he asked Mai what she had done the previous night.

‘I needed a night in,' she said. ‘To clean my room, wash my hair and just relax. I managed to wash my hair, but the room is in an even bigger mess. I did go to bed early, though.'

He turned and looked at her. He really had believed her when she told him about how little she usually did on Friday and Saturday nights, how happy she was to stay at home.

They danced and chatted and then stayed on the dance floor for the last few slow songs. As usual, he parked the car some distance from her house and they remained there for a while, as they always did, before he drove her to the door, arranging that, in case they did not connect on the phone during the week, he would pick her up at the usual time the following Sunday.

As he turned the car and drove back to the main road, he knew that he would never see her again and felt some satisfaction that he had not bothered to convey to her what he had witnessed the previous evening.

But the satisfaction was short-lived and was replaced by a feeling of shame at how easily he had been led on by her. He was a perfect person to two-time since he was locked behind the bar on Friday and Saturday nights. She had enjoyed going out with him; he still believed that. And in the parked car at the end of each night she had responded to him in ways that were unmistakable. But she must have enjoyed two-timing him, and must have laughed at the thought of him coming back week after week in the hope that they might get to know each other better.

In all the years, he had never seen her again, or even heard anything more about her. Nor had he ever bumped into her brothers or any of her friends. On one occasion, soon after he failed to turn up to collect her, he had answered the phone in the bar and heard her voice and had immediately hung up.

If he were to see Mai now on the opposite side of the street, it would mean nothing to him. With Eilis Lacey, on the other hand, he still wondered if he might have convinced her to stay. If she really was married, they could not have lived together in the town, but they could have gone somewhere else, or he could have followed her back to America.

When Eilis left so suddenly, he felt humiliated that the whole town knew he had been badly fooled. This time no one knew. No rumours about him and Mai started and grew. And there were nights when that almost made it worse. He was alone with his story. He had time to think about it, especially in the mornings when he woke or when the bar was not busy.

Two different women had deceived him. In some way, being fooled by Eilis did not make him feel angry with her. She must have had her reasons for what she did. About Mai, he felt conned, he had believed in her, looked forward to seeing her every week. He had really thought that she appreciated his problem as a man who owned a bar and did not have many nights free. But she was gone now. It was seeing Eilis Lacey on the street that made him remember her.

—

He looked at his watch and found that it was after three o'clock in the morning. He had drunk several glasses of whiskey on top of a few beers. He knew that he would not sleep. When he stood up and went to the bathroom, he realised that what he was going to do now had actually been in his mind for the past two hours.

If he went out, he was not worried about meeting anyone. The streets of the town would be deserted now. It was one thing that he and Nancy had learned – how easy it was to move unobserved in Enniscorthy in the early hours of the morning.

If he left the house, he promised himself, it would be just this time. He would not make a habit of walking along Rafter Street towards Court Street, passing the top of Friary Hill until he was outside Eilis Lacey's house. He would look up at the unlighted windows, but he promised himself that he would not stop. He would walk as far as the end of John Street and then turn and walk past the house one more time. He thought about Eilis asleep inside. He imagined her breathing, her face in repose, the shape of her body under the blankets. And then he would walk purposefully home, hoping that he might get even a small amount of rest before first light appeared.