Heart of Gold

‘That,’ said Lucy, ‘that is something I cannot remember.’ She knew they would not believe her, but she didn’t care.

‘Was it the first night he came back to see you?’

Lucy only smiled enigmatically. What they all wanted to know, specially her nieces and nephews, was when exactly Sam had proposed to her. That it was scandalously soon after Sam’s first wife died – poor Mona – they already knew. The whole town knew for that matter. Tongues had begun to wag within minutes of his stepping out of the Dublin train and everyone had guessed he had come back to her after all the years. A lot of people maintained he would, but nobody dreamt he’d come so soon, and Lucy sensed disapproval in some quarters.

Dear Sam. Lucy couldn’t understand why people didn’t give him credit for so faithful a heart. Only the young had seen his love in its true light and responded to the romance of it. And that was why she would not have minded them knowing, the young people, knowing that Sam had indeed declared his intentions on that first night of all, that he had hardly stepped inside the door when he had broached marriage. But she couldn’t tell them, dearly as she would like to have done because of course she had Sam’s character to consider. And, as well as that a certain respect had to be shown towards the dead. Although, mind you, Lucy told herself, her own sisters had not shown much respect. The very day Mona died, Louise and Bay, the only two of the family who lived in the town, had come running down the street screeching like oracles.

She was in the yard at the back of the house, which Louise and Bay still called the garden, although the real garden had long gone to glory. A large portion of it at the end, most of it indeed, had been compulsorily acquired by the town council when they were widening the main street which was behind their house. All Lucy had for a garden were some plants in tubs, but they in no time at all flourished and spread like wildfire until in no time at all they had covered up every unsightly thing in the place, the tin roof of the fuel shed, the walls to either side and above all the cast-off rubbish of two generations.

‘I’m out here in the back-yard,’ she said when she heard them calling her name. They ran out to her, yes, ran. She hadn’t seen either of them run in years.

‘Lucy! Did you hear!’ they cried. ‘Sam’s wife is dead.’

‘Oh, no!’ she said, and she sank back against a bushy mass of jasmine. Like a living creature, it gave way at the shock of her weight, then braced to take it. ‘Not Mona Hendron?’ A minute too late, she realised she had used Mona’s maiden name.

Louise didn’t miss the significance of that. ‘Take care!’ she said. ‘You may find him at the door one of these days to see if you’ll have him back.’

‘Oh, don’t be silly, Louise,’ Lucy said, taking this for a compliment and feeling it should be disclaimed.

But Louise had not meant it for a compliment. ‘He’d be just the kind of old fool to do something like that,’ she said. ‘Why didn’t you marry him, anyway when he was young? You never really told us.’

Lucy bridled. ‘Why didn’t I marry any of them if it goes to that?’ she said coldly. ‘He wasn’t the only pebble on the beach.’ It was a well enough established fact, and Louise and Bay had no business to forget it, that her beaux had been legion. Even those who had not known her in the old days had only to look at her now to believe in her legend. Louise and Bay seemed to forget how sought after she had been. Even now they were implying that Sam had been the only real string to her bow, she who went everywhere with a crowd of admirers circling around her.

Not that she ever took joy in her nimbus. She was forever shooing men away like wasps. But it only made them pester her all the more. At dances she was continually being waylaid behind some potted palm or Chinese screen. It got very tiresome, a fact that Louise and Bay never believed. They rarely gave her any sympathy, even after they were married themselves and when she – now she could face it – when she had been left behind by the tide. The fact was that Sam was the only one she might have married, because only with him did she feel friendly and at ease. Indeed, they were very modern in the way they took things for granted about each other. The trouble was that they sometimes took the wrong things for granted. Or Sam did. He assumed that she’d never marry him. He never asked her reason.

It was Sam she told about her first and premature proposal at sixteen. They were coming home from school with their satchels on their backs when she told him. He nearly doubled up with laughing. They had to put down their satchels till they got their breath back, they laughed so much. In the years that followed, Sam was a party to many a laugh of the same sort. He was almost as quick as herself to spot when some poor fellow was about to fall for her, some newcomer to the town, a bank clerk, or a solicitor’s apprentice, or maybe just a visitor in the hotel. ‘Poor fellow!’ he’d say. ‘Poor fellow. Another case of Lucyitis!’ He was never mistaken about these prospective suitors, only about the outcome of their suit. ‘Take care, Lucy,’ he’d say each time. ‘This one will sweep you off your feet.’ He never learned to take her treatment of one as an indication of how she’d treat the next. And when at last it became clear that she gave them all short shrift, Sam being timid and humble, took it as a guarantee, that he had no chance at all.

Then when he was the last man on the scene and she had reached her thirtieth year, he surprised her one evening. ‘What are you waiting for anyway, Lucy?’ he asked out of the blue.

‘For you, Sam,’ she said promptly.

‘Don’t joke with me,’ he said soberly. ‘I know I have no hope.’

‘You have as good a chance as anyone,’ she said. And then, cautiously, she decided to give him a hint of certain misgivings. ‘Matrimony doesn’t appeal to me,’ she said, ‘much less maternity.’ For a minute she thought she had uncovered her fears of childbirth, but she hadn’t really disclosed anything, and so he didn’t believe her.

He’d bent his head. ‘I envy fellows that are married,’ he said.

It was the first time she’d realised that, living alone in a room in the Central Hotel, he might well long for a home of his own, but she was impatient with him for not seeing what it was that held her back.

‘Why are you single so?’ she’d cried.

‘Because of you, Lucy,’ he said. ‘I’d stay single forever if I could be sure you would. But you might walk off one day and leave me in the lurch.’

‘I’d never do that,’ she’d said. ‘We might be an old Darby and Joan yet. I wouldn’t mind that at all.’ Then, thinking she’d been very meaningful, she ran off, laughing and happy. Next time, she thought, she’d give him a broader hint.

But there was no next time. Lucy was hardly awake next morning when her sisters came into the room. ‘Did you hear what’s being said, Lucy?’ they cried. ‘It’s all over the town that Sam Lowndes is engaged. To Mona Hendron! It can’t be true, can it?’

Never! she thought. Never! But she wasn’t going to let herself down before them, ‘Why shouldn’t it be?’ she’d said coldly. Yet she sprang out of bed, and in a few minutes she had left the house and gone uptown in the direction of the Central Hotel.

Before she got halfway, however, coming towards her, hurrying, with his head down, was Sam. ‘Oh, Lucy, I was coming down to see you,’ he’d said.

‘Is it true?’ she’d cried.

That he didn’t ask what she meant was the first sign she got that there was truth in what she’d heard. He looked frightened, too, or was he only unusually excited? ‘Is there talk, Lucy?’ he asked anxiously.

‘Talk! It’s all over the town that you’re engaged to Mona Hendron,’ she said, blurting it out.

What did she expect? Certainly not what he’d said.

‘She was right so. I thought she was only having me on. I was going to come back and tell you last night, only it was very late. You see, Lucy, it was after I left you it happened.’ He looked away. ‘Isn’t it strange how things do happen,’ he’d said dazedly. ‘It was because I thought I saw you looking at my collar, and I knew it was frayed, so I went in to Simmons’ drapery to buy a new one before the shop closed. And to think I never bought it!’ He’d put up his hand to the collar, which indeed was very frayed, and soiled as well. ‘She was there inside the counter.’ He gulped. ‘Mona,’ he said. ‘She was showing something to a young one that was buying ribbon. They were laughing. Then, when the young one went out, Mona came over to serve me. ‘Did you ever see one of these, Sam?’ she said, and she had a card in her hand. It was a card cut in the shape of a hand, and it had nine or ten round holes in it. Each hole had a number. A ring card, she called it. Did you ever see one, Lucy?’

‘Of course I did,’ she snapped. ‘For taking the measure of a girl’s ring finger!’

‘That’s right,’ he’d seemed surprised that she knew. ‘I never saw one till then. That’s why I took it up in my hand.’ He shook his head. ‘That’s where I made my mistake. I see now it was stupid of me, but I held it out and asked her to show me how it worked. She started to put her finger into the little holes, one after the other, till she came to the one that was right for her. “That’s my fit now,” she said, and she laughed and held up her finger with the card dangling from it.’

When he came to this point of his story, Sam had been overcome. ‘Oh, Lucy, wasn’t I unfortunate!’ he’d cried. ‘At that minute, the door opened and two young women came into the shop. I only knew them by sight, but Mona knew them well. One was the manageress of the Railway Hotel. It appears that two worse gossips you couldn’t have found. “They’ll have it all over the town we’re engaged, Sam,” said Mona when they went out.’

‘You didn’t believe her?’

‘Well, I did and I didn’t,’ he’d said miserably. ‘She was very upset. She began to cry.’

A tremendous relief had come over Lucy. She began to laugh.

But Sam didn’t laugh. ‘Oh, it’s not funny, Lucy,’ he said. ‘She could be compromised. She said those wouldn’t rest till they’d spread the story all over the town.’

‘Ah, for heaven’s sake!’ she’d cried impatiently. ‘Who’d believe a story like that?’

‘Didn’t you believe it, Lucy?’ he’d said dolefully. ‘And if you did, what can we expect from other people? I’m afraid I’ve put myself in a very tight corner,’ he said, taking out his handkerchief and wiping his forehead.

She’d stared at him. ‘You don’t mean to say you’d contemplate—?’ But she couldn’t trust herself to utter the word ‘marriage’. ‘That you’d contemplate going ahead with this nonsense?’

For a minute he said nothing. ‘I wouldn’t want to do anything dishonourable, Lucy,’ he said.

‘Nonsense Sam. Everybody knows you are a man of honour.’ It had been on the point of her tongue to add that everyone knew it was with her he was in love. But she swallowed the words. ‘If you ask me,’ she said, ‘it looks as if she was out from the start to catch you.’

‘Oh, hush, hush, Lucy,’ he said. ‘She didn’t think anyone would come into the shop. It was nearly closing time. I didn’t bother to buy the shirt. Instead I said I’d give her a hand with putting up the shutters. She has too much to do in that shop, I often thought that. And she’s not very strong, either, I’d say.’

‘Well, she doesn’t look delicate to me!’ Lucy’d cried. Was he in the habit of helping with those shutters, she wondered.

But Sam was scrupulously considering her remark. ‘Oh, I don’t mean she’s delicate,’ he said. ‘Just not strong.’

There was a long pause. ‘Ah, well, what does that matter, one way or another, to you, I mean?’ she said at last, in a low voice.

‘Oh, it could matter a lot,’ he said meditatively, ‘later on.’

To her utter amazement, she realised that he was thinking of marriage. ‘Well, it seems she has no fears for herself in that respect if she’s so determined to get a man,’ she said vindictively.

‘Oh, don’t be hard, Lucy,’ he said. ‘After all, it’s a natural instinct in a woman. And there’s another thing. I think maybe she’s had a soft spot for me for a long time past.’

‘And that would excuse her, I suppose?’

This time, he didn’t notice the bitterness. ‘She’s a very decent girl,’ he added quickly. ‘A man could do worse.’

In the face of that, how could she have said anything other than she did. ‘Good luck to her so!’ she said. ‘And you, too! I wish you joy of each other.’ And she’d turned on her heel and gone into the house.

‘Well!’ said Louise and Bay, who had seen them through the gable window and come rushing to meet her.

‘It’s true,’ she’d said. ‘He’s just told me.’

And so, in a way, it was she who had put the seal on their engagement. What was more, for all her high spirits and her shining looks, from that moment she took a back seat in life. The strange thing was, though, that on the day Mona died it seemed that she’d been given back, in an instant, her lost role. She was once more what she had been, a romantic figure, tantalising, unpredictable. And now, with her nieces and nephews growing up around, she had a larger audience than ever. Clearly, this renewal of her affair with Sam had them all on tenterhooks.

‘You wouldn’t think of marrying him, Lucy?’ her sisters cried in consternation.

They didn’t seem to give a thought to her age. Not even the nieces and nephews. It was of Sam they were doubtful. ‘He must be an old fellow by now, Aunt Lucy,’ they said.

‘He’s the same age as me,’ she said dryly.

‘But when did you see him last?’ they persisted.

‘Not for years,’ she admitted, and she laughed. ‘He may be bald for all I know.’ She was determined to take everything in good part. ‘Would you like to see a picture of him?’ she asked, remembering an old faded photo that had been taken on an outing of the Temperance Society. They were all in it, herself, and Louise, and Bay, and several others, of course, too, and, in the middle of them, Sam. She hadn’t looked at it for years. ‘How young we all were!’ she exclaimed, glancing at it before showing it to them.

But the young people were looking at the clothes, not at the faces. The clothes looked a million years old. ‘Which is Sam?’ they asked.

‘In the middle.’ She pointed to him.

They looked closer. ‘Oh, Aunt Lucy, I thought you were joking. He is bald.’

That annoyed her a bit. ‘How could he be bald then? He was very young at the time.’

‘His hair must have been awfully fine, if so,’ one of them said, peering.

‘It was very, very fine,’ she said, trying to be patient. ‘It was as soft as a child’s.’

‘Oh, Aunt Lucy, you’re blushing,’ they squealed. ‘Aunt Lucy’s blushing.’

It would have been just like the old days, the teasing and the innuendoes, if Louise hadn’t damped them down. ‘I must say this conversation is in very bad taste,’ she said. ‘His wife is only a week dead.’

Involuntarily, Lucy corrected her. ‘Two weeks,’ she said.

The young people giggled.

Louise glared. ‘Don’t tell me you are counting the days!’ she said.

It was only then Lucy realised that it wasn’t at all the same as in the old days. Of course, her family didn’t know the full story. They didn’t know how Sam had been tricked into that first marriage. She’d never told a living soul. She was just about to tell them then when it occurred to her that it would be a betrayal of him. Already, her loyalties had begun to engage her less to them than to him.

If anything were to crop up again between Sam and herself, it would hardly suit Louise and Bay. Better for them to have her there, where she always was, in the old home. The house was hers, of course, by her mother’s will, as the sole surviving single one of the family, so it would go to them when she died. But what was it worth? Nothing. Riddled with woodworm and flaking with dry rot, it wouldn’t fetch a penny if it were to be sold. On the other hand, the site might well become very valuable in time to come. At some future date, they or their children might benefit from what she now had to preserve at such cost. Only for her, it would have fallen down long ago. It wasn’t just the upkeep and maintenance but she’d paid the rates and taxes as well. And meanwhile they came and went as they pleased. Bay and Louise ran in and out as if they’d never left home. To observe the formalities never occurred to them. It was the same with the rest. Even the ones that had left the town came back occasionally for their holidays, or spend a weekend. And as for their children! It has been a regular holiday home for those children: so safe, and free of charge. And when they grew up, the children, too, made their own of the house. Such an excellent place to study, quiet, dull. Such an excellent place to recuperate after an illness or an operation. A regular nursing-home, that’s what it was on occasion, somewhere to put up their feet, with someone to dance attendance upon them. Selfish to the core, every one of them. But she’d never really seen this clearly until the matter of Sam arose. What she found contemptible was that they should begin their campaign against him so far in advance of events. For although she, too, thought it likely that Sam might come back to her, it did not cross her mind that he would make a move until Mona was a year dead, or until the year was nearly out.

But one night two weeks later, when there was a knock on her door, she knew it was him. She had the house to herself for once. Not that that made much difference, it might as well have had walls of glass from the way Louise and Bay knew all that went on in it. Indeed, within five minutes of his stepping off the train they knew about it. And, he had no sooner stepped out again to catch the train back, than the lot of them were down on top of her. Had they no shame?

That, however, was what they were saying about her. ‘No shame, no shame at all,’ they intoned as they came in the door.

‘What are you talking about?’ she cried. ‘What more natural than that he would turn to us in his bereavement?’

‘To us? To you! He had to pass my house to come here,’ said Louise.

‘And mine!’ cried Bay.

‘What did he have to say, anyway?’ they demanded.

For a minute, she didn’t answer. Instead, she walked over to the mirror and stared into it. Aware of them huddled behind her, she stared into the glass. Well, she had more looks left than either of them could lay claim to ever have had at all. With this knowledge, she felt her old power over them returning. And she remembered something. In the old days, they never knew what to make of her, that was what used to drive them mad, and she could still do it. ‘Wouldn’t you like to know!’ she said.

‘You might have spared a thought for us,’ they said, ‘and not set the town by the ears.’

‘You’d think it was me went up to Dublin to see him,’ she said.

‘That wouldn’t have been as bad,’ Louise and Bay were beside themselves. ‘He could have written and arranged to meet you somewhere, and not make a laughing-stock of us all.’

One of the children had to intervene. ‘Anyone would think he’d popped the question. He was only feeling his way, isn’t that right, Aunt Lucy?’

If they only knew! For when she’d opened the door to him, his first words were an apology, not for his haste but his tardiness. ‘This was the earliest I could come down, Lucy,’ he’d said as he stepped inside, and her timid expression of sympathy was immediately absorbed into his own exclamations, as he took off his coat and hat and laid them on top of the piano. ‘A terrible thing, death! A terrible thing, Lucy,’ he said. ‘It leaves the living half dead, too. I was sick, actually sick, would you believe that, on the day she was taken to the chapel, let alone on the day of the funeral. The confusion! You’ve no idea what it was like. We had a good maid, fortunately, a very decent girl, too; she couldn’t have felt it more if she was one of the family, but that only made matters worse, because whenever she came across something belonging to Mona she started to scream and cry. She hasn’t got over it yet, indeed. She misses her a great deal, because although she’s a great worker, she’s lost without someone to tell her what to do. Too slow! no method! Do you know what time I got my lunch today? Three o’clock. It’s a wonder I caught the train this evening. I’ve been trying to get down all week.’ The ease and familiarity with which he ran on was amazing. There was no constraint between them. ‘You’re looking well, Lucy,’ he said practically, as he sat down. And then, without putting a tooth in it, he gave his reason for coming. ‘I’m not going to let you slip a second time, you know.’

It seemed only proper to pretend she didn’t understand, but he caught her eye, and she felt her face redden.

He looked at her fondly. ‘We can’t afford to misunderstand one another again, Lucy. We haven’t the whole of life before us, now, that we can be prodigal of it.’

It was so true she was disarmed. ‘All the same,’ she murmured. ‘It’s very soon to talk about it.’

He stood up and moved nearer to her. ‘What’s the difference between talking about it and thinking about it?’ he said softly. ‘You never ceased to have your niche in my heart, Lucy. You must know that. I never pretended otherwise to anyone. And what more natural than that my thoughts would turn to you, run to you, when I was free again. To whom else would I turn? Aren’t you nearer to me now than any living soul?’

It was what she felt herself, and yet she was troubled by feelings of sadness and regret. ‘Oh, Sam, if we could be young again.’

But he shook his head. ‘This was the way it was ordained,’ he said, and somehow instantly the words, though trite, put everything into perspective. The years between past and present were reduced to scale at last, and his marriage to Mona put in its proper place, a mere incident in his romance with herself. ‘Oh, Lucy. Oh, Lucy,’ he said. ‘We need happiness more now than we needed it when we were young.’

That was true, too. So true.

‘Be kind to me Lucy,’ he said, almost in a whisper. ‘I need kindness badly.’

‘Oh, Sam,’ she said tenderly, as if it was her heart and not her voice that spoke.

‘It’s yes?’ he cried, and he took her hand in a clasp that was gentle but experienced, and she felt that any effort to withdraw it would be hopelessly inadequate. He sensed her reluctance, though. ‘Still afraid to take the plunge, dear?’ he said softly. ‘There’s nothing to be timid about. I’m an old hand at the game now, and even if I do say it myself, if I made one woman happy, I don’t see why I shouldn’t do the same again. Well?’ he said.

Lucy’s head reeled. She had to gain time. ‘I never offered you any refreshment after your journey, Sam,’ she said, making a move towards the door. ‘You’ll have a cup of tea, or something?’

With one hand he still detained her, but with the other he managed to pull out his watch. It was the same old-fashioned turnip type he’d always had. ‘I won’t have time,’ he said. ‘I’ll have to be leaving for the station in a few minutes. Next time, I’ll try and get down earlier. I had only one purpose on this occasion. Quickly! Tell me, Lucy! Are you going to make me a happy man?’

‘But you say you’ll come down again, Sam. Can’t we talk about it the next time?’

His big silver timepiece might be the same, but Sam himself had changed. His watch and his mouth clicked shut with the same finality. ‘I’m not asking you to name the day,’ he said. ‘Only to give me your promise.’

Since she still presumed there wouldn’t be any question of marrying until the year was out, she might have agreed there and then were it not for a silly scruple. If she gave her promise, might he not think fit to kiss her? And would that be seemly?

But he’d whipped out his watch again. ‘Let me decide for us both,’ he said. ‘There’s no time to be lost.’ And then, as she thought he would, he leaned forward and kissed her. It was, however, the quickest of kisses. It wouldn’t disturb a mouse. ‘It’s settled,’ he said, and he snatched up his hat. ‘I must make tracks.’

Well! After he’d gone, she leaned back against the hall stand, and her impulse was to giggle like a girl, not knowing that her sisters were already on their way down the street, about to break in on her with their strictures.

Not that she heeded them. On the contrary, their concern for themselves was so great it had made any concern for them on her part utterly superfluous. She need consider only herself and, of course, Sam, as on his next visit she told him. ‘I don’t mind what the family say, Sam. It’s not of them I’m thinking. After all, they cannot say much if we wait till the year is out.’ As Sam seemed about to interrupt her, she put up her hand. She had other scruples. ‘Wait a minute, Sam,’ she said. ‘Let me explain. I’m not upset by what anyone might say.’ She hesitated when it came to the point, she just couldn’t tell him.

But he knew. ‘It’s of Mona you’re thinking, isn’t it?’ he asked gently.

Gratefully, she nodded her head.

‘Listen, Lucy,’ he said kindly but carefully. ‘Listen to me. Mona would be the first to understand. She would be the first to want me to be happy, happy and well cared for. Do you know what I was thinking today while I was waiting for my meal to be served up to me?’ As he saw the sympathetic inquiry in her eye, he broke off to answer it. ‘Oh, indeed yes, the same story. It was after three when I got it. And if you saw it when it was put in front of me.’ He shuddered. ‘Uneatable! The poor girl does her best, but she lacks direction. She can’t be blamed. But what’s this I was saying? Oh, yes. I was saying that while I was sitting there waiting for my meal to be dished up, and knowing well how unappetising it would be, ice cold, the chop stuck to the plate, I thought to myself that it would break Mona’s heart if she could see me. And do you know what else I thought, Lucy? I thought that Heaven couldn’t be Heaven for her if she were able to look down at me in that moment.’ He closed his eyes. Then, opening them wide, he looked bravely on a new day of thought. ‘God surely spares them such sights,’ he said.

It was certainly comforting to think so. All the same, she felt guilty, and she said so. ‘I can’t help it, Sam,’ she whispered.

He took her hand. ‘Guilty for what, Lucy? Is it for the past?’

She felt like laughing. ‘Oh, no, no,’ she cried. ‘For the present. I feel I’m taking you away from her.’

‘It was God who took her away from me Lucy,’ he said. He was so wise. ‘Aren’t you only taking me back?’

Gentle, and yet discriminating. How could she but trust him? But he was looking at his watch. It couldn’t be time for his train already? ‘Oh no, no,’ he said reassuringly. ‘It’s just that time flies, and we have a lot to arrange. First, let me put your mind finally at rest about poor Mona. Let me tell you, Lucy, that she urged me to marry again.’ He nodded his head and lowered his voice. ‘She spoke of it just before the end. I won’t repeat her exact words. Such things are sacred, but you can rest assured we’d have her blessing on what we are about to do.’ He closed his eyes again, this time as if in prayer, and when he opened them it was briskly, as one rises from prayer strengthened to take a new command of things. ‘We have nothing to fear from our consciences,’ he said. ‘Tell me about your family. Did I understand you to say when you opened the door that they have been causing you anxiety?’

Although it was really the other way round, Lucy nodded.

She frowned. ‘They could give a lot of annoyance,’ he said, ‘unless, that is to say unless we go about things a clever way.’

Thinking there could be no ambiguity in a truism, Lucy agreed happily. ‘What we must do,’ said Sam, ‘is spring it on them.’ Then, before she had time to say anything, he snapped his fingers. ‘Why tell them at all, for that matter. I could have a word with the priest and get things arranged quietly. Then I could slip down the night before on the late train and we could be married as early as possible.’

Lucy was speechless. She couldn’t say anything, yet distinctly he appeared to be listening.

‘Ah, you’re right,’ he said, exactly as if she had spoken. ‘You’re right, Lucy. It wouldn’t do. The town is too full of gossips. Our little secret would be common property in five minutes. No, we’ll have to think of something else.’ He pondered for a minute. ‘You could come up to Dublin and we could be married up there.’ But almost at once he shook his head. ‘No, no. That wouldn’t do either. You’d want to be married here, in your own parish. It’s quite natural. For sentiment’s sake if for no other reason. It’s different, perhaps, for me, but I’m able to put myself in your place. There will be enough that will be strange to you.’ He pondered again. ‘I’ll tell you what we’ll do,’ he said, and she had only time to notice in passing that the conditional mood had given way to the future positive. ‘I will come down on the evening train, but I won’t come all the way,’ and he was so pleased with his little ruse, he winked at her. ‘I’ll get off at a small station somewhere up the line, and in the morning I’ll hire a car and come across country just in time for the ceremony. You will only have to walk up the street as if there was nothing at all afoot. And then, before anyone gets wind of it, the deed will be done.’

Lucy was stunned. ‘Do you mean elope?’

‘Elope?’ It was a word Sam himself hadn’t heard for years, but, seeing how it brought a light into Lucy’s eyes, he repeated it. ‘Elope, that’s it!’ he said.

‘And who’d tell my family?’ she asked, doubtful in spite of a rising excitement.

‘We can tell them ourselves when all is over,’ Sam said. ‘There’s only Louise and Bay in the town, isn’t that all? We can walk around and confront them, beard them in their dens.’

Lucy laughed guiltily. ‘Arm in arm!’ she said.

‘That’s the idea,’ said Sam. ‘Let them lump it or like it. And as for the ones in America, well, we needn’t think about them. It can’t matter to them one way or another, nor the ones in Dublin, either, although they can be told in the same way as the ones down here. We can walk around and call on them that night if it isn’t too late when we get there.’

‘To Dublin? Is that where we’ll go?’ She’d given no thought at all to the honeymoon. In the old days, honeymoons were mostly spent in Kilkee or Tramore. ‘Is it to Dublin we’d go?’ she repeated.

Sam had given no thought to the matter, either. He was sobered by his omission. ‘I’ve taken a lot of time off lately, I’m afraid,’ he said, ‘with one thing and another, when Mona was ill, and later for the funeral. I’d find it a bit awkward to ask for more time in so short a space. But wait a minute!’ he cried. He really was resourceful. ‘We’re forgetting that it will be all new to you, the house, I mean. The house will be a big change for you after this place. It’s a nice little house, snug and dry.’

He made it sound so like a nest Lucy had to smile.

‘That’s my girl!’ he said approvingly. ‘I knew you’d take the right attitude. And let me tell you something. Honeymoons are overrated. Believe you me! I can give you my solemn assurance on that. What is more, I have yet to meet the married couple that hasn’t the same to say. That’s one part of the business with which they’d dispense if they had to do it over again. Yes, take it from me, honeymoons are grossly overrated. I have no hesitation at all in asking for your trust on this point, Lucy. None whatever.’

‘Will I not see it so till, till afterwards, the house, I mean?’ she asked timidly, trying hard not to sound doubtful.

‘Isn’t that best, don’t you think?’ He was very cheerful. ‘It’s in good order. You’ve nothing to worry about on that score. You’ll have nothing to do but walk in the door. Not only is it fully fitted, fully equipped, but as I’ll only be one night gone from it, it will be well aired into the bargain.’ Remembering that in this respect Lucy did not know what she was being spared, he threw up his eyes in token of some past experience of his own. Then he lowered them to rest gently on her. ‘I can only say that it’s no more than we deserve, Lucy, after our long wait, our long, long wait,’ he repeated sighing. ‘Lucy, you’re not going to make it much longer, are you?’

‘Oh, Sam!’ He made her feel so dilatory that she looked anxiously at the calendar on the wall behind his back. ‘Lent begins next month,’ she said. ‘We’ll have to wait till after that, anyway.’

But Sam had whisked the calendar off its nail and was examining it. ‘Unless we hustle, and get it over before Lent,’ he said. ‘I don’t see what there is to stop us, do you?’

And so one day in early February, with a bunch of snowdrops pinned to her lapel, Lucy became a bride.

‘Let me do that, Lucy. You might strain yourself,’ admonished Sam, as he took her dressing-case and put it up with the other suitcases on the luggage rack of the train. Doing so, he looked tenderly at her. ‘It wasn’t such an ordeal after all, was it?’ he asked, and he leaned across and patted her on the knee. ‘You look bewildered,’ he said, and he laughed. ‘Well, cheer up, love; it’s all over now.’

Bewildered she was. More than the ceremony seemed to have ended. What, for instance, was she to make of her family’s new attitude towards her? Had they got wind of things in advance, that they had taken her news so coolly? What had happened to their fears of a scandal? Above all, what had become of their concern for themselves? Now it was only of her they thought.

‘Well, it’s your own business, Lucy,’ said Louise, almost as soon as she’d opened the door to them, when, as planned, she and Sam went round, arm in arm, after the wedding. She hadn’t given them time to open their mouths. One look and Louise guessed. Their being together at that hour of the day may have made the telling superfluous, of course. And then there was her bunch of snowdrops. And oh yes, Sam had a snowdrop in his buttonhole.

Bay wasn’t surprised, either. ‘It was more or less what I expected,’ she said when Louise’s youngest had been sent up the street to inform her and bring her down. ‘Well, I hope you’ll be happy,’ she added.

‘Oh, naturally, we all hope that,’ said Louise.

And later, when Lucy and Sam were in the train and the family was standing on the platform, Bay’s parting words were not the most encouraging. ‘You must make the best of it now,’ she called out as the train began to slide away from the platform.

‘We’re off!’ cried Sam, and although he urged her to lean out and wave to them, she had barely time to raise her hand before the railway bridge snuffed them out. There was nothing to do after that but settle into her seat. Sam remained standing. Closing the window, he turned his attention to the luggage. ‘I’ll fold our coats and put them on top of the cases, out of the way,’ he said.

His back was to her. But anyway she hardly heard him. Her mind still echoed with her sister’s words. ‘I hope you know what you’re doing.’ Did she know what she was doing? What had she done? Had she, in her endeavour to hide her intention from others, hidden it in part from herself as well? She stared out the carriage window. The flat fields through which they were travelling were familiar to her still, but field by field they were being flung back to either side as if flung out of existence. ‘Oh, Sam, did we do right?’ she whispered.

Sam’s mind, however, was on the overcoats. It was a mistake to have turned them inside out. With their slippy silk linings, they kept sliding off the rack. He had to stand up again and take them down and turn them right side out before he put them back. ‘That’s better,’ he said contentedly, surveying them once more before he sat down. But he’d heard her. ‘It’s funny you should say that,’ he said then. ‘Mona asked me that same question. In the same circumstances, too. But she had cause to ask. Poor Mona! There was a little cloud on her happiness.’ He sighed.

‘A cloud? What was it!’ she asked in dismay.

‘She was very tenderhearted,’ said Sam. He made a discreet sign of the cross. On the opposite seat, Lucy felt obliged to do the same. ‘She was never able to enjoy her own happiness if it cast a shadow over that of someone else.’

In the past few weeks, Lucy had heard many references to Mona, but somehow she’d never really thought much about her. For that matter, she hadn’t thought about her for years. Sam and Mona were married almost immediately after the bogus episode of the engagement ring, and Lucy had taken care to be away at the time of the wedding; she went to Lisdoonvarna for several weeks, although it wasn’t the best time of year for the spa. And when she came back, people had the grace not to speak about them to her. Then perhaps the fact that they had no children made it seem after a time as if they had passed out of existence. But in the train, when Sam spoke of her, Lucy suddenly pictured Mona again, as she must have been on the morning of her wedding trip. It might have been on this same train that they took their departure. It could have been in this very carriage they travelled. Perhaps on this very seat Mona, too, had sat. Suddenly she leaned forward. ‘Sam, would you like to change places?’ she cried.

‘But why?’ Sam asked.

‘Well, some people say it’s bad to sit with your back to the engine,’ she said. ‘It could make you sick.’

Sam was just about to cross his feet contentedly. ‘Not me,’ he said. ‘But I’ll change with you all the same if you like.’

‘Please, Sam,’ she said faintly.

When they’d changed seats, he looked at her with a worried expression. ‘Do you feel better now?’ he asked. ‘Mind you, Mona liked to face the engine, too, although I always think it’s better to feel sick than to get a cinder in your eye.’

‘You mean she sat on this side?’

‘Yes, always on that side,’ said Sam amiably, ‘unless the carriage was crowded. In which case—’

But the train roared through a tunnel just then, and Lucy couldn’t hear. What did it matter anyway, she asked herself, and she was prepared to think about something else when they flashed out into the open again. From either side, the green fields rushed towards her, but it was the green fields of life that had rushed towards Mona. It was all very well to say that in the old days Mona couldn’t hold a candle to her, but what figure would she cut now if placed by the side of that green, young girl? Fresh apprehensions chilled her, and she forgot that for Sam those early memories of Mona had long been overlaid by others, less exciting. By a strange transference, she began to think of Sam as young and green, too. I must look awful, she thought, putting up her hand nervously to her hair, to her forehead, to her cheek. She hadn’t slept well the night before, and she wasn’t used to early rising. She must be a sight. She didn’t dare look in a mirror.

As if he were a mirror, however, Sam at that moment gave her back her reflection. ‘You look a bit tired,’ he said, and he sighed. ‘Mona failed a lot in late years,’ he said. ‘She looked very badly towards the end.’

Lucy looked at him fixedly. To talk about Mona was hardly the best cure for her at that moment, but it might be better than thinking about her. ‘I never saw her again,’ she said. ‘Not after—’

She didn’t need to finish the sentence. He nodded understandingly. ‘She was strong enough, you know,’ he said, easily conversationally. ‘I used to think she wasn’t, but I was wrong. She was able for plenty of hard work. There was no doubt of that. We hadn’t much money in the early days, and she worked hard to save every penny. I often went to bed at night and left her downstairs, and do you know what she’d be at? Glazing my collars, or waxing my shoes. I had no control over her when it came to work. But in the end she got pulled down by those pregnancies.’

Lucy started.

‘Didn’t you know?’ said Sam, seeing her surprise. ‘She had four or five miscarriages. She did indeed. And it nearly broke her heart. It was a real cross. She’d have been a good mother, just as she was a good wife, but it was not to be, it seems.’ He shook his head. ‘Many a time, I came home from work and found her sitting in the dark, brooding over it. I used to do my best to console her, but it was no use. I used to tell her that she was a mother. Time and time again, I’d tell her that. ‘You are a mother, Mona.’ That her children never came to full term did not deprive her of that title. But she was inconsolable. You see, Lucy, it wasn’t of herself she was thinking but of me.’ His voice dropped. ‘The most unselfish of women. Do you know what she said to me one day? She said that if she’d known that she’d never give me a family, she wouldn’t have married me at all. Can you imagine anything more unselfish? To think that she could bring herself to wish another woman in her place.’

‘Oh, she couldn’t have meant it, Sam,’ Lucy protested.

Sam shook his head. ‘Indeed she did. You’ve no notion of her depth. And what is more, Lucy, it was you she was thinking about at the time.’

That was too much. ‘Oh, no!’ she cried, putting her two hands up to her face. It was one thing to know that she had held her place in his heart. It was another thing altogether for Mona to have known it. ‘She didn’t mention me by name, Sam, did she?’

‘Well, maybe not on that occasion,’ said Sam piously. ‘She had great delicacy,’ he added. ‘But I may as well tell you your name was not unmentioned in our home. She often spoke of you, especially in our early days, because you see, she knew she had only come second with me.’ He leaned forward. ‘Ah, yes, Lucy, your name was a household word with us in the early days of our marriage. Indeed, it became a kind of joke in the end. Ah, don’t be offended. It was a playful little joke; there was no harm in it. Ah, there was a rare quality in Mona, that she could turn the tragic into the comic. In her place, another woman would surely have nourished bitterness against you, especially when she remembered what you were in those days, because, that’s another thing, she was fully aware of how much better-looking you were than her. I often heard her say that beauties like you were no longer to be seen.’ He shook his head and sighed deeply this time. For a moment, Lucy thought it was for the passing of that beauty he sighed, but it was not. ‘Ungrudging!’ he said. ‘Generous-hearted! That was Mona!’ And to her dismay he took out his handkerchief. But when he unfolded it, it appeared it was only to blow his nose. ‘Her unselfishness was never more in evidence than at the end,’ he said then. ‘When she felt the end was near, it was not of herself but of me she was thinking. She couldn’t bear the thought of me being neglected. Do you know, Lucy, one day when I went into the hospital I had a button missing off my waistcoat, and when she saw it the tears ran down her face. “You can’t say but I always had you well turned out, Sam,” she said. “I can’t bear to think you’d ever be otherwise.” It was on that day she made me promise I wouldn’t let any thought of her stand in my way if I saw fit to marry again. But I told you that, didn’t I?’ he asked, suddenly anxious.

Something of the sort he had undoubtedly said, but she certainly had not understood she had been specifically designated by Mona to take her place. It was one thing to think of Mona’s benisons vaguely showering down from Heaven; it was quite another to think of her dispensing them from her deathbed. Acquiescence from above seemed right and proper and in keeping with the supernatural state but from a hospital bed it seemed like a subtle accusation. ‘She didn’t really mean me?’ she cried.

She looked at him. Was this the constancy to which she had clung? Like the moon, it had two faces: on one side hers, and on the other Mona’s. But which to which was shown? If Mona had to live with anecdotes about her, what would it be like for her, Lucy, in a few hours’ time, when she’d be boxed up in Mona’s house? Suddenly she felt faint. She’d have to get out in the corridor for some air. But she didn’t want him to come with her. She got to her feet. ‘Will you hand me down my small case, Sam,’ she said. ‘I think I’ll have a wash.’ That ought to keep him from following her.

But he hadn’t thought of doing so, and after he’d put up a hand to assist her he settled back in his seat. ‘Remind me to tell you something when you come back,’ he said patiently. ‘A nice little thought that came into my head.’

Impatiently, she stood in the doorway. ‘Tell me now!’

But he’d taken out his watch and was looking at it, and then he glanced out of the window. ‘My little plan would depend on what time we arrive in Dublin,’ he said, ‘and whether or not there is any daylight left.’ Suddenly she knew what was in his mind. ‘Where is she buried?’ she asked, and her voice in her own ears sounded like lead.

But his face lit up, and she saw that he marvelled at her intuition and what he took to be another affinity between them. ‘You had the same thought? That would mean twice as much to her.’ But there was a draught from the open door. ‘We’ll talk about it when you return,’ he said affably, ‘and I’ll tell you a little incident that happened six or seven years ago. You’ll find it very touching, I know.’

Oh, no, you won’t, she thought, as emphatically as if she’d spoken. She got out into the corridor, and almost ran in her anxiety to get far away from him. The train was travelling fast. The noise of the wheels was deafening, and several times she would have been thrown from one side to the other if she hadn’t steadied herself against the rattling woodwork, now of a window and now of a door. The train seemed to be crowded, although in their first-class carriage she and Sam had sat in state. But finally she came on a carriage with only one young couple occupying a corner. Not noticing that the floor was strewn with confetti, she was about to take refuge there when, outraged, the man sprang up and slapped the blind down in her face.

Tears rushed into her eyes. But what did it matter where she went? Sam would eventually miss her and come to look for her. If only the train would stop, she could get off? She glanced out of the window. It was getting dark outside, but the fields between the darkening hedges were pale with a thin mist that seeped up from the ground. If the train stopped for even a minute, she could jump down and stumble across the line and lose herself in that bright but concealing mist. She could imagine herself coming to a stand, out of breath, in time to watch the lighted train move forward again without her. She would see the carriages slide past one by one, till in one of them, sitting foolishly waiting, would be Sam. But the train wouldn’t stop till it got to its destination. If she wanted to get off, she’d have to throw herself out. Involuntarily, she glanced at the door handle. It was green with verdigris around the stem, but the lever itself shone bright from handling. She’d only have to press it down and the door would fly open. Quickly, she clapped her hands into her pockets as if to save them from some act for which they alone would be responsible. She wasn’t as unbalanced as all that. But she had begun to tremble, and the thought of continuing on to the end of the journey was unbearable. And that house! It was unbearable to think of facing into it cluttered with all the paraphernalia of another woman’s life.

‘I’ve left everything as it was, Lucy,’ he’d said. ‘You’ll know better how to dispose of her little possessions than me.’

Her little possessions! What did that mean? Presses full of clothes? Chests of drawers stuffed with every kind of rubbish? Boxes, portmanteaux, little cubby-holes here and there filled with God knows what junk. She’d known enough of Mona to guess she’d been a great one for finery and gewgaws of all kinds.

Gewgaws? A frantic thought came to her. Her own wedding ring! Where had Sam got it? During the ceremony, he had clapped it on her finger so fast it was as if he had handcuffed her to him, but it was very thick, thicker than wedding rings were at the present day, and now, looking closer, she saw it had at the same time a worn look. Was it possible that it was not new? She shuddered. And her engagement ring? She’d known it was not new, but she liked antique jewellery, but she remembered being surprised at the alacrity with which he’d produced it the moment he’d broken down her scruples. He’d pulled it out of his pocket, where, loose as a pebble, it had rattled around among his keys and his coins. That, she’d supposed, was why there was dust in the crevices of the setting. She hadn’t washed it, because the setting looked so insecure. But now, examining it, too, very closely, she saw that it was grime, not dust, that clogged the claw. Feeling sick, she went to drag the rings off her finger. But they were a tight fit and her fingers swelled when she tugged at them, but she went on trying to drag them off until the skin broke and began to bleed. The sight of the blood steadied her for a minute. Anyway if she were to bare the bone, what difference would it make? For that matter, what difference would it make if she did get the rings off? If she threw them out the window, it would not alter her situation. It would have been to more purpose to have thrown herself out.

Insidiously, when it came again, this thought was less alien. A strange excitement made a vein in her throat throb, and at the same time it seemed that the train was gathering speed crazily, like a train derailed. The rattling carriages careered after each other, but every now and then they veered slightly, as if they would unlock their couplings and fly asunder. If at that moment she were to press the door handle, she knew exactly what would happen. In an instant the door would be dragged out of her hand and clatter back on its hinges, or else be wrenched off them altogether. Caught in a great current of air travelling as fast as the train itself, it might be a long time before the door would land on the tracks, perhaps not until the train had passed and the line was empty and silent again. And what about her? Snatched from her feet, freed from all volition, she, too, would be violently caught up and sucked out into that rushing current. Like a bit of paper, she’d be blown away. She went nearer to the door. Heaven had never been easily imaginable, but it would be heaven to feel those rushing winds sprout like wings from her shoulder-blades to uphold her and bear her through the air. To think that by a single act she might undo her folly and prove herself finally and forever to be what she had always been, a romantic figure.

But in her heart she knew it was too late. She was committed to being real at last. Sam had committed her. It was a long way back to the carriage where he sat, but she’d have to go back. She’d have to stumble along the train till she came to where she’d left him. She’d have to open the door and go in and sit down by his side.

Slowly she began to go back along the corridors. When she came to the compartment occupied by the lovers, she saw that the blind was up. It must have snapped up unnoticed by them. Tired of kissing and indifferent now to gapers, they sat hand in hand, staring in front of them. And although they didn’t care this time, she averted her face and hurried on, looking outward to where on the other side of her the fields should have been. But now against the glass only darkness pressed. Like a backing of mercury, it had made the windows into mirrors. And in one of those windows, sitting patiently waiting for her, she saw Sam. He was asleep. He was having a little nap, which wasn’t to be wondered at, because Sam was tired and Sam was old.

Poor Sam, she thought, and her heart softened. What if he did meander on about Mona! He’d earned the right to it. He had learned a larger love than she or Mona knew anything about. ‘Sam,’ she said, stepping into the carriage.

With a start, he jerked his head up. He had been in a sound sleep, but he spoke immediately, as if out of his thoughts. She didn’t at once catch what he said. Does he know which of us it is at all, she wondered, Mona or me? And she tried not to mind. But Sam at that very moment repeated what he had said.

‘Poor fellows!’ That was what he’d said. ‘Poor fellows.’ And she realised with a start that not only was it of her he was thinking, and of the past, but that, in particular, he was thinking of the swains that had swarmed around her in the old days, and whom in the end he had bested. Little did he ever think he’d do it, he who had nothing to recommend him but his heart of gold.