Two Lives Read Online Free PDF Page B

Matilda, sitting together, didn’t eat much. ‘Oh, I could never manage all that,’ Rose said as soon as she received her plate, staring at its contents as if making a judgement. The chickens would have cost them nothing, Matilda reflected, running about the yard they’d have been.
    The Reverend Harrington spoke to Mr Dallon and again Mr Dallon laid down his carving knife and fork. He said that the clergyman had wanted to say Grace but had been out ofthe room at the right moment. If nobody objected, he’d say it now, even though some people had started. That didn’t matter at all, the Reverend Harrington added hastily. For what we’re about to receive,’ he added also, ‘the Lord make us truly thankful.’
    Mary Louise felt sleepy due to Letty’s keeping her awake half the night with her haranguing. She had taken the plunge, she said to herself; she had made her own mind up and had done it; it was her own business, what she had done, it was her own life. She smiled at Miss Mullover, who was leaning across the table to speak to her.
    ‘D’you remember,’ the schoolteacher asked her, ‘how you used to want to work in Dodd’s Medical Hall?’
    Mary Louise did. She’d wanted to serve in the chemist’s because it was the nicest shop in the town. It had the nicest smell, and everything was clean. To serve there you had to wear a white coat. Everyone knew it was special.
    ‘It’ll be Quarry’s now,’ Miss Mullover went on, and Mary Louise wondered if the old schoolteacher was ga-ga, since it was apparent to everyone present that she had just married into the drapery. The truth was that the counters of Quarry’s had always been her second choice. She’d clearly never said so to Miss Mullover or there’d have been a reference to it, but she’d said so at home. When she’d finished at school, a shop was the best that could be done for her; her father had said that, and she hadn’t minded, thinking of Dodd’s or Quarry’s or even Foley’s grocery and confectionery, two doors down from the drapery in Bridge Street. Word of her availability was put around the town on the next fair day, but it seemed that no assistance was required. Foley’s was reserved for the Foley girls, Renehan the hardware merchant only had men behind the counters and didn’t have to go outside the family either, with three sons. No daughter of his would go into a public house, Mr Dallon laid down, but that possibility didnot arise either. For five years Mary Louise had remained at home, helping generally, waiting for a vacancy. That was what she had to weigh in her mind when Elmer Quarry displayed his interest – the long, slow days at Culleen, the kitchen, the yard, the fowl houses, for weeks on end not seeing anyone outside the family except at church or at the egg-packing station. All that was what Letty appeared to have forgotten.
    ‘Algebra was Elmer’s stumbling block. He could never get the hang of brackets.’ Miss Mullover nodded repeatedly over her food, lending emphasis to the recollection. ‘Twiddly brackets, square brackets, round brackets. He could never get the order right.’
    ‘Fat lot of use they were.’ Elmer laughed loudly, taking Mary Louise by surprise and causing her to jump. She tried to think if she’d ever heard him laugh before, and she remembered her brother saying he never did. His small teeth were all on display at once. The fat of his face was bunched up into little bags.
    ‘ Algebra poor ,’ Miss Mullover recalled. ‘ Arithmetic good . I remember writing that. Nineteen thirty-one or thereabouts.’
    Mary Louise imagined her husband at that distant time, a podgy boy, she imagined, with podgy knees. He’d have had long trousers at the boarding-school in Wexford.
    ‘I saw a lot in the schoolroom,’ Miss Mullover reminded Mr Dallon as he sat down at last, the carving complete.
    ‘You did a great job in the schoolroom, Miss Mullover.’
    Mr Dallon reached for salt and pepper. He remembered Mary