Nora Webster (23 page)

“You look as though you are in a world of your own,” Phyllis said.

“I was,” Nora said and smiled.

“We should go now, and I think it would be a mistake to be seen carrying drinks through the village, even though Guinness is the sponsor. This is the last time I will agree to meet in a pub.”

She gulped down the brandy and soda.

The hall, when they arrived, was filling up. Some of the people Nora knew by name, others by sight; and then there were people
whom she did not know at all, but their way of standing at the doorway, or close to the wall at the back, or looking around them, had something familiar about it; it was both shy and at ease, both friendly and reserved. It made her feel that she knew them as well as she had ever known anyone here.

As the teams identified themselves, Phyllis grew more authoritative. She stood up regularly to make sure that the space between their table and the seats where the contestants would sit was being kept clear, and then insisted that no one could loiter close to the contestants during the quiz to prompt them.

There were three men and one woman on each team. As Phyllis explained the rules, she produced from her bag a stopwatch that she set to sound an alarm after ten seconds. Nora studied the contestants. One of the men she knew from Blackwater was a retired teacher and the woman beside him had been on a committee of the Irish Countrywomen’s Association. The next in line looked to her like a schoolboy, and the last, she supposed, was a farmer. As Phyllis spoke, an atmosphere of solemnity came over the contestants. It was, Nora thought, as though the priest had come out onto the altar or the teacher had arrived in the classroom.

The first questions were so simple they were almost insulting. Phyllis asked them, however, as though they were challenging and would require much jogging of memory. Her voice was like that of a continuity announcer on the radio, and it had, when she pronounced certain words, an English edge to it. Nora saw how easy it was going to be to keep the score, but noticed also that Phyllis kept a supervisory eye on what she was writing down during the second and third rounds as the scores started to vary.

As she came to the four-mark questions, a man produced another brandy and soda for Phyllis and another Babycham for her. She had
no idea who had bought these drinks, as Tom Darcy had not followed them to the hall.

By the time the six-mark questions began, the Blackwater team was slightly ahead. In a round of sports questions, there were cheers from the body of the hall when some of them pertained to the GAA. This caused Phyllis to demand silence for the next round, questions about classical music.

“How many symphonies did Brahms compose?” Phyllis asked.

Nora watched the man from Kilmuckridge. He bided his time, as though he was trying to remember something he once knew. When Phyllis announced that she was activating the stopwatch, he said, “Twenty-five.”

Phyllis looked contemptuously around the hall, leaving a silence. Nora looked down at the score sheet.

“As everyone knows,” Phyllis said, “Brahms wrote four symphonies. Twenty-five indeed!”

There was a hush at the next question.

“How many symphonies did Schumann write?”

It was the turn of the retired schoolteacher from Blackwater.

“I’ll guess nine,” he said quietly.

“Wrong,” Phyllis said. “He wrote four.”

She took them then through Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, Mahler, Sibelius and Bruckner to stunned silence as each name was called out and each contestant failed to guess the correct number of symphonies. When she listed operas and asked them for the name of the composer, both the retired teacher and the young man from the Blackwater team knew the answers. This put Blackwater ahead by fifteen points as she came to the last rounds, when the contestants could consult with each other. When one of them asked for a toilet break, Phyllis agreed. Another brandy and soda and Babycham arrived on the table.

When Nora looked over towards the door, she noticed that a few men had gathered there. They were looking at herself and Phyllis with suspicion and resentment. One of them, a young man with sandy hair and a sunburned face, glanced back at his associates when he saw that Nora was watching him. As he approached her, he appeared personally aggrieved.

“She has a quare big grand voice, that one,” he said, nodding towards Phyllis. “I hope she’s not thinking of driving through Kilmuckridge tonight because there are a few lads are sore enough at her, and the voice on her. She thinks she’s someone, I’ll say that for her.”

Nora looked away and did not reply.

“I’ll tell you now,” he said to another man, “she’d get a big fright if someone stuck one of her symphonies up her hole. She wouldn’t be asking questions then.”

Phyllis whispered to Nora that they should proceed with the quiz as soon as they could.

“Now, everybody,” she shouted, “get ready for the last exciting rounds. Mrs. Webster will give us the score so far.”

The man continued to hover until Phyllis turned her full attention on him.

“I’m afraid you are in the way,” she said. “There’s no reason for you to stand so close. Could you go back and sit down?”

The man hesitated and then gave her a look of pure contempt before he went back to his friends at the doorway.

One of the Kilmuckridge contestants had obviously prepared for this round of questions, about the prime ministers and presidents of various countries. He was able to give the names of the prime ministers of both Norway and Sweden. It was when the team was asked the name of the prime minister of the Soviet Union, and they agreed first on Brezhnev and then changed to Podgorny, that the problems arose.

“Which is it?” Phyllis asked.

They consulted for a while until Phyllis set the stopwatch.

“It’s Podgorny,” one of them said.

“I’m afraid you are wrong with both of your answers. The premier of the Soviet Union is Kosygin.”

“You asked the name of the prime minister,” one of them said.

“And that is Kosygin.”

“You just said he is the premier.”

“And that is the same as prime minister. And my decision is final, I’m afraid. You can argue all you like. Now, the next question.”

As murmurs came from all around, Phyllis raised her voice.

“I will have no more interruptions,” she said.

Nora concentrated on the score sheet and was afraid to look up. By the end of the round, since the Blackwater team had failed to answer some of the questions, there were only three points between the teams. It was clear to Nora, and she presumed to many in the hall, that if the Soviet Union answer had been allowed, then Kilmuckridge would be ahead. In the last round, which focussed on famous battles, each team managed to answer every question correctly. By the time the quiz ended, Nora had the score sheet totted up. Blackwater had won by three points. Phyllis got to her feet and demanded silence again and read out the result in an imperious voice. Before she had even time to sit down, a man emerged from the crowd and moved towards her. He was wearing a cap and a check jacket.

“Where are you from?” he asked Phyllis aggressively.

“What has it to do with you?” she replied.

“You’re not even from Enniscorthy,” he said. “You’re a blow-in. And you’ve no right to push your weight around down here.”

“Maybe it’s time you went home,” Phyllis said.

“At least I know where my home is.”

“You robbed us,” another man shouted. “That’s all there is to it.”

Just then, Tom Darcy emerged from the crowd.

“Myself and a friend of mine from just outside Kilmuckridge would like to invite you two ladies for a drink in Etchingham’s to thank you for your hard work.”

“We should go with him,” Nora said to Phyllis, and was relieved when she agreed.

“Are you Maurice Webster’s wife?” the man with Tom Darcy asked when they arrived in the bar.

For a second, she was unsure if the man knew that Maurice was dead.

“I knew him well,” the man added.

Nora looked across to find that Phyllis, with a full glass of brandy and soda in her hand, was talking animatedly to Tom Darcy.

“You knew him years ago?” she asked.

“It was when he came down with his brother and a few others. We went out fishing. Is that brother still in the land of the living?”

“He is,” Nora said.

“And there was a delicate one that died?”

“That’s right.”

“And did Margaret, the sister, ever marry?”

“No, she didn’t.”

“She was a nice woman, liked by everybody.”

He sipped his drink and looked at Nora.

“I was sorry to hear about Maurice anyway. Lord, we were all very sorry to hear that down here.”

“Thank you for saying that.”

“You’d never know what way life goes. Some of it makes no sense at all.”

They stood at the counter in silence.

“Would you like a better drink than that?” the man asked her eventually.

Nora looked at her Babycham and hesitated.

“I hear it’s awful stuff,” the man said. “A vodka and a white lemonade would be better for you. That’s what my missus and the daughter drink nowadays when they go out.”

He ordered her a vodka and white lemonade and poured it for her when it came. She saw that the group of men who had been standing close to the door of the hall were here now and ordering drinks; the bar was filling up after the quiz and there was a brightness in the atmosphere. Something unusual had occurred which had lifted the evening, given people something to talk about. In their liveliness, the men in the bar looked more like a group coming from a hurling or a football match.

Phyllis stayed talking to Tom Darcy, who would have plenty to tell his wife about when he went home. Soon, they were joined by a number of other men who spoke to Phyllis as though they knew her. Phyllis joined in the discussion and she nodded at remarks made and looked from one man to another. Because her husband was a vet, Nora thought, then she must be used to the company of farmers and knew when to drop her imperious tone. Or maybe it was the brandy.

None of the men would allow Phyllis or Nora to buy a round of drinks, and each time they bought a round for themselves they included a brandy and soda for Phyllis and a vodka and white lemonade for Nora.

When Nora saw Phyllis signalling towards the door, she spotted Tim Hegarty and his wife, Philomena, coming in. Tim was a teacher whom Maurice had been to school with. She knew that he and his wife roamed the countryside at the weekend in search of company but she could not think what they were doing in Blackwa
ter. They had two of their children with them. Nora could tell by the expression on Phyllis’s face that she disapproved of them.

Tim was famous for his good looks and his singing voice. His wife sang with him when she was not too drunk, and, once, at a concert in the Mercy convent, where Nora had been, the entire family of parents and six or seven children played the von Trapp family in
The Sound of Music.
Everyone said that they could have been professional musicians if only Tim and Philomena could stop drinking.

There was a call for silence from the bar. She could see Tim Hegarty standing alone with his eyes closed. His hair was oiled and he wore a thin bow-tie and a striped white-and-red jacket. He looked like an American film star. Still without opening his eyes, he put his head back and sang in a soft voice but loud enough so that he could be heard all around:

“Mona Lisa, Mona Lisa, men have named you. You’re so like the lady with the mystic smile.”

At first Nora thought that someone might have sung that song at her wedding; she tried to think back who it might have been. And then she thought no, it was later than that, it was a time when she was not the focus of attention. It was after Fiona was born, and her happiness might have come from how well Fiona was, how she was learning to walk or beginning to talk. Then as Tim sang the second verse it dawned on her precisely when it was. She and Maurice had left Fiona with her mother for the day and maybe the night as well so they could go to the wedding of Maurice’s cousin Aidan to Tilly O’Neill. The reception was in the Talbot Hotel in Wexford, and Pierce Brophy, Nancy’s son, the one who went to England later and made all the money, was the best man. Pierce stood up and sang that song which must, she thought, have been a hit that year, and everyone was amazed that he knew the words. He sang it slowly, just as
Tim was singing it now, and even though it was not the sort of song that Maurice liked, Nora loved it, she loved how slow and sad it was, and how clever the words were when they rhymed. More than anything else, she loved that she had Maurice beside her, she loved how they were out together at a wedding wearing new clothes and that everyone in the party knew that she was married to him.

When the song ended, the crowd in the bar cheered Tim. Only Phyllis seemed less than impressed and looked at Nora, raising her eyes to the ceiling. Nora noticed that she had a full glass of brandy and soda in her hand and saw that someone had also left her another vodka and white lemonade. She could hear Philomena Hegarty tuning her guitar at the far end of the room.

In all this noise and confusion, she felt a sharp longing now to be anywhere but here. Even though she often dreaded the night falling when she was in her own house, at least she was alone and could control what she did. The silence and the solitude were a strange relief; she wondered if things were getting better at home without her noticing. Since she was a girl, she had never been alone in a crowd like this. Maurice would always decide when to leave or how long to stay, but they would have a way of consulting each other. It was something she never thought about; indeed, she was often irritated by the way in which Maurice’s mood could change, how anxious he would be to go home one minute, and then how eager he could become, how easily involved with company the next minute, while she waited patiently for the night to be over.

So this was what being alone was like, she thought. It was not the solitude she had been going through, nor the moments when she felt his death like a shock to her system, as though she had been in a car accident, it was this wandering in a sea of people with the anchor lifted, and all of it oddly pointless and confusing. Then there was
another hush in the bar, the guitar began a tentative melody, and Tim Hegarty started to sing “Love Me Tender.” In the way he gave in to the melancholy in the song, the yearning, she felt that he was mocking her, looking into her face and laughing, but soon the song itself took over, he softened and strengthened his voice as the melody dictated and also let the guitar do its work, leaving gaps so that its sound could be fully heard. She joined in the cheers and the applause when it had finished, and she listened with everyone else, surprised, when the Hegartys seemed to ignore the applause and moved into a much faster song. Tim Hegarty imitated the American accent of Elvis Presley: