The Bright One

‘Take anything of that nature,’ he had said. ‘Sure, what would I be wanting with it?’

‘You are very generous,’ Molly had replied.

That much was true, Breda conceded, studying her appearance now in the large oval mirror on the wall over the dressing-table, confirming that the shorter haircut her mother had given her looked really quite stylish and that what she had thought might turn out to be a nasty spot on her chin had not, after all, come to fruition. Also, at seventeen, she had left behind her brief period of puppy fat and, in spite of demolishing all the good food her mother put before her, was once again as slim as a wand.

Parts of her bedroom were also reflected in the mirror: the pale blue distemper of the walls; the curtains at the window, which matched the dressing-table and the bedspread; the fringed lampshade. Even though she had made all these things herself, and had distempered the walls, it was Luke’s house and he had allowed her to do it. So why, after a year of living here, could she still not take to him?

Her mother had settled in quickly. There was a lot to be done. The house had been neglected for years, except for Flora Milligan’s weekly lick-and-a-promise, and she had given in her notice soon after Molly’s appearance on the scene. Now whatever was to be done, cleaning, cooking, sewing, baking, Molly got on with, was immersed in. Sometimes Breda thought her mother had forgotten all about their previous life. How could she? Had she forgotten Dada so soon?

On a day when she was downcast – it was Luke’s Wednesday for Ennis so he was out of the house – Breda put the question to her mother.

‘Mammy, you haven’t forgotten Dada, have you?’

Molly looked up from her ironing in astonishment, but when she saw the look on Breda’s face, pity welled in her. She put the iron down on its stand.

‘Forgotten Dada? No, sweetheart, I have not forgotten Dada, nor will I ever be forgetting him. What makes you ask?’

Breda hesitated. ‘It’s just . . . well, is it not that you seem so settled here, as if we had never had another life?’

Molly shook her head.

‘It is not like that, dote. I will not forget that other life. Did it not give me you, and all my other children? But it is over, and that is not of my choosing. I have to make the best of things, and so have you. It worries me that you do not like Luke. I know he is not Dada, but . . . ’

‘He is nothing like Dada!’

‘I know that. He is himself. He is honest, he is hardworking, and he is kind. You cannot say that he is not kind, and to you as well as to me. Look at what he has let us do in the house to make it comfortable. Only think about the sewing machine! What a kindness that was.’

He had seen Breda struggling to make curtains, watched Molly turning sheets side to middle to save him the cost of new ones, with the old machine they had brought with them, the thread constantly snapping, the tension slipping.

‘Would it not be nice, now, to have new curtains in the living room?’ Molly had said. The present ones were a dull, dark green, and had seen better days. ‘Not to mention a chair cover or two. But there is no way I can be making them on this old thing!’

She had truly not thought that anything could be done about it and it came as a great and wonderful surprise when, on his next trip to Ennis, Luke brought back a new sewing machine in the back of his van. Not new, exactly. It was second-hand, but in good working order.

‘Sure, I admit he is kind,’ Breda said. Though hadn’t he in the end, she thought, what with the new curtains, tablecloths and the like, felt the benefit as much as anyone?

‘Then try to remember that,’ Molly said. ‘’Twould be easier all round if you got on with Luke.’

How could she tell Breda that Luke had asked her to marry him? It had happened several weeks ago. She had, of course, refused him. James had not been dead a year then; she was not ready for marriage. It was not in her plans. What would people say?

But he would ask her again, she felt certain of it. He would not give up. And when he did ask her she was not at all sure what her answer would be, not convinced that it would still be ‘no’.

I am forty-six, she thought. If the Lord so decides, I might well live another forty years. It was no longer entirely a question of security, she was sure she would have the job with Luke for his lifetime, but wasn’t he coming up to his sixtieth birthday, though as hale and hearty as any man in Kilbally? But no, it was truthfully not just the security. She was a woman who needed marriage. She recognized that in herself. She needed its closeness and its intimacy. She needed to belong. And she liked Luke; hadn’t she always?

He loved her. He had declared it. It was possible, she supposed, that she could come to love him. She longed for love, for a man’s love.

‘Why is it that you do not take to Luke?’ she said to Breda. ‘Why will you not try?’

‘I do try,’ Breda said.

It seemed to her that she was no longer as close to her mother as she had once been. She missed the conversations – carefree, lighthearted – they used to have before Dada died. There was not so much laughter now. This she put down to the fact that, until quite recently, almost every evening had been spent in the company of both her mother and Luke, and however kind he was, no-one could call Luke O’Reilly a jolly person, and her mother seemed to be settling into his ways.

Or perhaps her mother was just growing old. After all, she was forty-six, no longer young!

‘Then try a little harder,’ Molly said. ‘To please me!’

But now life had taken on a new shine, and it was entirely due to Rory Nolan. He had come from Dublin, all of a sudden it seemed, and for an unspecified period of time which might even be permanent, to help his uncle, Dermot Brady, who owned the pharmacy in Kilbally. Yet no-one remembered Rory visiting his uncle as a small boy.

‘Why do you think Rory did not come to Kilbally sooner?’ Breda asked.

The question was seemingly out of the blue. Weren’t they talking about Breda’s attitude to Luke? However, these days, Molly thought, Breda could bring the name of Rory Nolan into any conversation.

‘’Tis not certain why,’ Molly answered. ‘Though his mother quarrelled with her brother Dermot when she went off and married in Dublin. I don’t remember that she ever brought Rory here as a child.’

The other question was, why had he come to Kilbally now, at the age of twenty-three? The reason given was that Dermot Brady, who had never married and therefore had neither chick nor child, needed help in the pharmacy and fancied his own kith and kin over a stranger. But since Rory had been a stranger all these years, it did not wash with Molly.

And what does Rory Nolan get out of it, Molly asked herself? What compensates a young man for leaving the bright lights of Dublin for a place like Kilbally?

Well, at the moment one compensation was certainly Breda. He was doing a line on her all right, and how could she not fall for it? He was tall, dark haired, fine-featured, broad-shouldered, well dressed, and with a wide smile and a gift of the gab. Business had never been so brisk in the pharmacy, with half the mothers and daughters of Kilbally queuing up to be served with headache powders, face creams, cough mixtures and babies’ dummies. It was as if a star, straight from Hollywood, had shot into their midst.

Nor, as Molly reluctantly reminded herself, was there a single thing to hold against him. He was unfailingly polite to one and all, chucked small babies under the chin, and was regularly at Mass. There he sat a little in front and to the side of Breda, so that she enjoyed the pleasure of his perfect profile, yet was conveniently placed when, from time to time, he turned around and looked straight at her, turning her knees to jelly.

On the Sunday following her conversation with Breda about Luke, Molly, sitting beside her daughter, caught Rory at it, but when he knew himself caught he at once turned his warm gaze, with the hint of a conspiratorial twitch at the corners of his mouth, upon the mother. Molly looked away quickly, as if it was she who had been caught.

He was out of church well before them, Breda champing at the bit because her mother would stop and ask how someone was, and was the new baby thriving, and draw Breda into the conversation. Was anything more certain, she asked herself, since half the unmarried girls in Kilbally had their sights on him, that one of them would carry him off before she even got out of the building?

When they did emerge he was in the centre of a group, but he left them at once and came over to Breda and Molly.

‘Good morning to you both,’ he said in his deep voice, raising the smart fawn trilby he wore to church. ‘Now would you be giving me the pleasure of escorting you two beautiful ladies back to your home, since we all walk in the same direction?’

‘’Tis not necessary . . . ’ Molly began, and thought how rude she sounded. ‘But very well, then,’ she ended.

Her reward from him was a radiant smile, with a flash of perfect teeth. They set off, he taking the edge of the pavement and manoeuvring Breda into the space between himself and Molly. The pavement was narrow. They could not avoid walking close together, bumping into each other from time to time.

He walked all the way to Luke O’Reilly’s shop with them, though it meant passing the pharmacy. He had been in the shop several times in the past week or two, on behalf, he explained, of his uncle. Now he lingered on the pavement outside the door, but if he was expecting to be invited in, Molly thought, he was due for disappointment. Also, it was not her place to be inviting people into Luke’s home.

‘I was wondering, so I was, if I might take Breda for a walk this afternoon?’

Rory made his request to Molly. Molly glanced at Breda, who looked as though she had had a light turned on inside her. If only the child would not be so transparent, always showing her feelings, good or bad! And I am thinking of her as a child again, she thought, and she is so no longer. She is seventeen. I was married at eighteen.

‘You must ask Breda,’ she said.

But it had been polite of him to ask her first – polite, or quite clever. She wished she did not have these double-edged feelings about the young man. There was no good reason for it; it was unfair.

‘I would enjoy it,’ Breda said. ‘’Tis a fine spring day!’ She would have enjoyed it even if it had been a cold November fog.

‘Then I will be calling for you at three o’clock?’ Rory said.

He raised his hat once again, and left them.

No matter how much her mother urged her, Breda could not eat her Sunday dinner, which was a pity because it was always the best meal of the week, and today there was a piece of beef, pink and succulent. She swallowed a mouthful of meat, pecked at a potato, pushed the cabbage aside, refused the rice pudding, and escaped to her room.

The time crawled towards three o’clock. She changed her dress twice, and then went back to the first one. She brushed her hair until it shone. She put on her blue beads, then took them off and settled for the pink. But at least Rory was not late. When his knock came at five minutes to three, she rushed to the door. She had been watching out for him for more than half an hour. She had no intention of inviting him in; she did not want time being wasted in polite conversation with her mother and Luke.

‘I wondered, would we walk along the cliffs?’ Rory asked as they set off.

‘I would like that fine,’ Breda said.

It was a favourite walk for Kilbally people, as well as for visitors who came by bicycle, or these days once again by car, leaving their transport along the sides of the lane before climbing the steep slope to the top of the cliffs.

It being a fine Sunday afternoon, there were plenty of people about. Although Breda would have liked nothing so much as to be on a desert island alone with Rory she was, on the other hand, delighted to be seen walking with him, especially by several people who knew her. To be one of a group of young people taking the walk was one thing, she had done it often – though she hoped that if they met with such a clique Rory would not wish to join them – but to be linking arms, which Rory had done the minute they were out of the main street, just the two of them together, was quite different. She knew it would not go unremarked.

This high, the air was as clear as crystal, so fresh as almost to tingle on the tongue. The sea, far below them, was a deep, dark, almost navy, blue, with the crests of the waves turning to green at the moment before they hit against the cliff face in an explosion of white foam and spray. Further out the water was calm, but in the small bays and gullies which cut into the cliffs there was strong movement and incessant sound, added to by the whirling and dipping and crying of the gulls.

‘I like the feeling of being above the birds,’ Breda said. ‘Of looking down on them as they fly. And I like to see the ones riding on the water, letting the waves take them wherever they will!’

‘And I would like it if you would not stand so close to the edge,’ Rory warned. ‘I don’t want to lose you. I’ve only just found you.’

He tightened his grip on her arm and held her close in to him. She was flooded with pleasure, her whole body trembling. Surely he must feel her shaking? She knew that what she wanted most of all now was to be alone with him. She wanted everyone else to disappear, leave the two of them with only the cliffs, the short, springing grass, the sounds of the birds and the sea for company. Minutes ago she had been pleased that there were people around to see them; now she wanted no-one but Rory.

As if he read her thoughts, he said, ‘Are there not far too many people around? Why would they not go away and leave the place to you and me?’

It happened almost immediately. The rain came, as it frequently did in Kilbally, with the suddenness of someone up there, behind the clouds, turning on a tap; warmish rain, and gentle, but persistent and plentiful. In no time at all the cliff top was cleared of people. Only Breda and Rory remained, and while he held her close Breda was oblivious of the weather.

Rory was more practical. ‘If we climb just a little way down, over there,’ he said, pointing, ‘there’s a rock overhanging. Sure, we could get shelter for a wee while, until it eases off.’

He began to lead her, cautioning her to be careful. The grass was slippery, but bit by bit they inched forward and made it to the place, a shelf about four feet wide, overhung by a rock.

‘Why, it’s quite dry here!’ Breda said. ‘Why did no-one else see it, I wonder?’

‘We may as well sit down until the rain is over,’ Rory said.

It would stop as suddenly as it had started, Breda knew that. It was the way it was on this coast.

He sat down, and pulled her down beside him, and then he was kissing her, gently at first, then harder, and holding her closer. It was not the first time in her life she had been kissed; hadn’t they all larked about on the way home from a dance? But it had not been like this, it had been nothing like this. It was as if his kisses entered her parted lips and coursed through her body, to her fingertips and the ends of her toes. And all the time she wanted him to do more than kiss her, though she was not sure what.

Then suddenly he stopped kissing her and held her away from him. ‘The rain has stopped, so it has, and we are both quite wet. I must take you home or your mother will not let you come out with me again!’

Breda wondered how he could change so quickly. She was still trembling inside, still half in another world where it didn’t matter what the weather did, but she didn’t protest as he pulled her to her feet. Whatever he did, whatever he said, was right, and she would follow him.

I am in love, she thought. I am really and truly in love! This is what it is like, and it is wonderful!

On the Wednesday he took her to the film show – Cary Grant it was, and he was not one whit more handsome than Rory Nolan, who, she was sure, could himself have been on the films if only he had wanted to. On Saturday night he accompanied her to the céilidh, where he spent most of his time with her, and on Sunday he again walked her and her mother home after Mass. She was, Breda could tell, the envy of all her friends in Kilbally.

And so it went on as spring gave way to summer: films, walks, dances; once a trip to Ennis; once they cycled all the way along the coast to Ballyvaughan and picnicked on the Burren. He was interested in everything about her, what she was, what she did.

‘I want to know all that’s ever happened to you!’ he said.

‘And that will not take long,’ Breda told him. ‘Not much happens in Kilbally.’

She told him about her family, about Kieran, about the twins in New York. She spoke to him of her father, and of how she came to be living in Luke O’Reilly’s house, and why she was not altogether happy there.

‘But you do not tell me anything about your life,’ she said.

They were walking along the edge of the hayfield. A path ran along the side of the field and when the hay was ready to be cropped, as now, Breda knew they were supposed to keep to the path, not tread down the grass; but Rory ignored that, forging a path several yards in the field, then firmly taking her in his arms and pulling her to the ground. They were completely hidden now, in a world of their own, closed in by the sweet-smelling grasses.

‘And isn’t that because my life only started when I came to Kilbally,’ he said.

She thought they were the most romantic, wonderful words she had ever heard.

And then there were better things to do than talk. He was on top of her, and she loved the weight of him, as if he was all hers and she was all his. His hands were everywhere, now caressing her neck, now undoing the buttons of her blouse, but when his hands moved downwards and he lifted her skirt and began to stroke her thighs, she pushed him away, and sat upright.

‘What is it?’ he murmured. ‘You needn’t be afraid, sweetheart. I won’t hurt you!’

How could she explain that she would not mind being hurt by him, and she was not afraid in the way he meant it? It was just that she knew they must not go any further, she knew that this was what led to a baby. For a girl in Kilbally, a good Catholic girl, to have a baby when she was not married was a mortal sin and a fate worse than death; a disgrace for which she would be sent away, indeed worse. Had it not been Kitty Shane, and only last year, who had gone with a man from the summer fair and he had left her with a child inside her, and hadn’t she drowned herself in the lough?

‘’Tis not that,’ she said hesitantly. ‘’Tis just that . . . well . . . only if I was married. Only then.’

Perhaps he would ask her to marry him, she thought! Oh, how wonderful that would be, to be married forever to Rory Nolan, to live with him, no matter whether it was Kilbally or Dublin, to be made love to, to have his children! She was suddenly full of hope. Had he not called her ‘sweetheart’? It must be what he had in mind. ’Twas only that he had not got around to saying it.

‘What a little prude you are!’ he said, though he was still smiling.

‘’Tis just that . . . ’

‘Don’t explain,’ he said. ‘I understand.’

‘And we will-still be . . . friends?’

‘Friends, is it? Well, why not?’

‘She seems set on this Rory Nolan,’ Luke observed. ‘Dermot is right enough, but what do we know of his nephew?’

‘Perhaps there is nothing to know,’ Molly said. She spoke without conviction. She was never totally easy in her mind about Rory and she wished once again that Breda was not so besotted with him, or at least did not let him see it so plainly.

‘Well then, never mind about Rory Nolan or Breda,’ Luke said. ‘There is something I want to say to you, Molly.’

‘Oh?’ She tried to sound surprised, for the sake of politeness, though she knew at once what it must be, and she had not yet made up her mind either way.

‘You can guess what it is and I will not beat about the bush. Will you marry me, Molly?’

‘I am not—’

He ignored her interruption. ‘I love you, Molly. I don’t think there was ever a time when I didn’t love you, but it never worked out. I would do everything in the world to make you happy.’

‘I am not sure—’

‘I am not getting any younger, and one day everything would be yours.’

‘Oh Luke!’ Molly cried. ‘That would not be why I would marry you! Not at all.’

‘I would not expect you to love me, not at first. But you do like me, don’t you?’

‘Oh I do!’ Molly assured him. ‘I have always liked you, Luke. Always!’ It was true. She could not remember a time when she had not liked and respected Luke O’Reilly.

‘Then if I love you, and you like me, what is to stop us? There’s many people happy on far less.’

‘I know.’

‘So what is it to be? Will you marry me?’

She looked at him directly. He was not handsome, as James had been. There was no bright twinkle in his eye, but there was great kindness there, and honesty. His hair, though still abundant, was grey, but didn’t she find grey hairs among her own black ones these days? And what did the colour of his hair matter? He was utterly reliable and trustworthy and he would never let her down. Surely these alone were qualities for which she could learn to love him.

She took a deep breath. ‘I will be honoured to marry you, Luke O’Reilly,’ she said.

She was sitting in the chair. He took her hands and pulled her to her feet, then he drew her into his arms and kissed her.

‘We will go into Ennis and buy a ring,’ he said. ‘You shall have whatever takes your fancy. How soon can we be married?’

‘As soon as you like,’ Molly said. ‘Will I wet the tea now?’

‘No,’ Luke replied. ‘I will open a bottle of sherry. We will drink to the future, yours and mine.’

From the corner cupboard he took two of the best glasses; delicately-cut Waterford they were, which Mary had brought with her when she first came to Kilbally. Molly had never seen them used before.

Rory walked with Breda as far as Luke’s house. I will ask him in for tea, she thought. Why not? Surely no-one will mind? But when she did so, he refused.

‘I have to get back,’ he excused himself. ‘Uncle Dermot is getting ready for stocktaking and I promised to help. But I will see you during the week, sweetheart!’ He gave her a squeeze of the hand, and was gone.

When she went into the house she was met by the unusual sight of the sherry bottle on the table, and Luke and her mother, who was slightly flushed, with her hair uncharacteristically untidy, drinking from the best glasses.

‘Let me pour you a glass, Breda,’ Luke offered quickly.

‘Why? What are you . . . ?’

‘We have news for you,’ Molly broke in.

She glanced nervously at Luke, then back again to Breda. She was not sure how to break it, but in the circumstances there seemed only one way.

‘Luke and I are going to be married!’

Wide-eyed with horror, Breda stared at her mother. Molly looked back at her steadily. No-one would know that beneath her calm exterior she felt afraid, her heart pounding in her chest. She was not afraid of her future with Luke. From the moment she had accepted him she knew that that was going to be all right. Breda was another matter.

Luke fetched another glass, half-filled it, and placed it on the table in front of Breda.

‘We want you to drink to our future,’ he said. He raised his own glass.

‘Sláinte!’

Without even looking at him, her eyes fixed on her mother, Breda picked up the glass and flung the contents full in Molly’s face.

‘Never!’ she shouted. ‘Never, ever! How could you!’

Then she threw the glass across the room, where it splintered into a hundred pieces against the stone hearth.