Two Lives Read Online Free PDF

accountant’s, was impressed. He hadn’t gone for anything today, he said. He’d heard about Polly’s Sweetheart.
    Letty changed out of her bridesmaid’s dress in order to help her mother in the kitchen. The chickens had roasted during the wedding service, the bacon and the spiced beef were cold, cooked the day before. Mrs Dallon’s cheeks were flushed from the small glass of sherry she’d drunk and from the heat of the range. She strained potatoes and peas. Letty tipped them into warmed dishes and carried the dishes into the dining-room. Mr Dallon began to carve the meats while the guests were seating themselves.
    ‘A great spread,’ Elmer remarked. He was wearing a carnation in the lapel of a muddy-brown suit, his Sunday suit he called it, much less worn than his usual clothing. His short hair had been cut the day before, and the barber’s application of brilliantine still kept it tidily in place. The back of his neck was a little red.
    ‘Lovely,’ a woman said. ‘Lovely it all is, Mrs Dallon.’
    Mrs Dallon, hurrying with two gravy boats, was too occupied to reply. She whispered to her husband and he paused in his carving to say:
    ‘I’m told to say, start eating. Don’t let the hot stuff get cold.’
    Miss Mullover confided to the clergyman’s wife that she loved a past pupil’s wedding. It was surprising the emotions you felt. Mrs Harrington – who knew that at one stage her husband had had heart-searchings about this match – was relieved that Miss Mullover seemed pleased. He would have liked to say Grace, she thought, but unfortunately he’d had a call of nature.
    James and the Eddery brothers poured more whiskey, finding the bottle behind a potted fern on a windowsill. The Eddery brothers were smoking cigarettes. They told Mrs Dallon they wanted to finish them before they sat down. They were in no hurry for the chicken and bacon, they said.
    Letty, given the task of moving the vegetables about on the table in case anyone was missed out, thought about Gargan the exchange clerk at the Bank of Ireland who’d been promoted to Carlow. They’d gone out together for two years, to the pictures and on bicycle rides, twice to the Chamber of Commerce dance in Hogan’s Hotel. When Gargan had gone to Carlow and enough time had passed to indicate that he wouldn’t be coming back to see her, Billie Lyndon of the radio shop had suggested an evening at the Dixie dancehall and she’d gone there once with him, but had found it rough. It might have been herself and either of them, she thought as shemoved the vegetables about. In this moment she might be sitting at the far end of the table, Mrs Gargan or Mrs Lyndon. They’d both mentioned marriage, not exactly proposals but the next best thing, sounding the notion out. In the Electric they had acted similarly: putting an arm along the back of her seat halfway through the big film and then, after another few minutes, grasping her shoulder. With each of them, she’d felt a knee pressing hers. Their fingers had caressed the side of her face. On the way home there’d been the good-night kiss.
    ‘You were lovely in that dress, Letty,’ Angela Eddery, still a schoolgirl, complimented while she spooned peas on to her plate. ‘Dead spit of Audrey Hepburn.’
    Letty knew that wasn’t true. Either Angela Eddery was confusing Audrey Hepburn with someone else or was simply telling a lie. She looked nothing like Audrey Hepburn; she was a different type altogether.
    ‘Did you make them yourselves?’ Angela Eddery went on. ‘God, I never saw dresses like them.’
    ‘We made our dresses.’
    When she offered the best man one of the potato dishes he said they were in the same line of business today, bridesmaid and best man. Mary Louise had said he was a bachelor, manager of a creamery near Athy. Letty considered he was familiar with her, calling her Letty straight off and talking the way he did. He was taller than Elmer Quarry, but just as paunchy, and balder.
    Rose and