Through Streets Broad and Narrow (6 page)

From the outset, that is to say, from the moment they got into that small, scented basement with its pink mirrors and gleaming bar, John felt that he had to be very careful not to let Groarke and his anger meet. To make it more difficult, the Irishman kept switching to diffidence and the manners of overdone politeness as though he were quite aware himself of the proximity of his rage and were placating it in advance. He spoke softly and smiled far too much over his Bacardi or White Lady, was a little too intimate with Jack, the barman.

They drank quickly and then picked up a taxi to Cork Street, where Theresa came out in a dress which John dared not look at till later. He more or less shut his eyes through all the welcome and the scowls of James taking in his black and white and the gold studs gleaming on his breast, but he did notice that Theresa was wearing a narrow black-velvet ribbon round her neck of the kind constantly advocated by the women's weeklies. He thought, Although really
I
like it, Oonagh will think she's with Groarke, so that's all right.

They had to go all the way out to Trinity Hall to pick up Oonagh. When they got there John said to Theresa and Groarke, “I'd better collect her as I know the drill better than Mike.”

They all crammed together in the back of the taxi without any introductions and spoke very little on the way into the Gresham. But in the lights of passing lamps and shop windows John saw them looking at one another. They did not look at Groarke at all, they kept on giving fairly covert glances at the other one's dress, stopping short only at the face as though they were saving that until later, when the light was better.

At the hotel they disappeared for a long time into Ladies' Cloaks while Groarke and John stood about with other men in
the foyer. When they came out they were talking at a tremendous rate, at least Oonagh was; Theresa was only smiling intermittently and saying, “Yes, I think so,” or “No, not recently.” But when they reached John and Groarke they quite ignored each other and started talking to them. Theresa hung back just for a moment, just long enough for John to join and take her into the ballroom if he had intended it; when he did not do this, Oonagh was automatically with him and Theresa was left with Groarke.

It was a bad moment but he believed he could explain it by inference as soon as he danced with Theresa. He whispered to Groarke, “You've
got
to take her for the first dance.”

“Which?”

“Theresa, of course,
not
Oonagh.”

“Why can't you make up your mind?”

“I have. Nothing's changed, but for Heaven's sake— Oh, I'll explain later.”

They found their table and sat down. Halfway through the grapefruit Groarke got up very suddenly and said to Oonagh, “If I could dance I'd ask you for the first dance.”

Before John could intervene Oonagh had risen and given him an extraordinarily beautiful smile.

As they moved away round the outside of the floor, John swallowed some more grapefruit and looked at Theresa. He said, “Groarke doesn't dance very much.”

“I heard him,” she replied.

“What I meant was that he doesn't often go to dances.”

“How long has he known her?” she asked.

“Who, Oonagh?”

“Is that her name?”

“I'm sorry, didn't he introduce you? Good heavens, aren't we all mad? It's just struck me that I never introduced you to
him
either. That's what comes of going into the Buttery.”

She said nothing for a time and they both went on with the grapefruit until she said, “Oonagh asked me how long
I'd
known him—in the cloakroom.”

“What a muddle it all is,” he said as lightly as he could. “Good! This is a foxtrot, let's have it, shall we?”

“I don't want to dance, thank you.”

“Not dance?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

No reply.

“Theresa, aren't you feeling well?”

She looked at him; he could not read it at all. It was a little like James looking at him, though it had never struck him before. He was astonished by the resemblance. He thought, She's Irish. Good God! She's Irish, too, why didn't I think of it?

“What's the matter?” he asked.

But she did not reply and he saw that she was looking at someone behind him carelessly, without any speculation at all. He turned round; it was Dymphna with Bill Collins.

She said, “Hello John! Where are the rest of your party?”

“This is Theresa,” he said, “Theresa Clynche. The other two are dancing: Oonagh and Michael Groarke.”

Dymphna smiled at him and he said at once, “Come on, have the rest of this one with me—in memory of the Admiral.”

And in that way he left Theresa at the table with Bill Collins, a large handsome fellow with black hair and blue eyes.

Dymphna asked, “What's the matter with your partner? She looks furious.”

“She's shy, that's all.” And to help her, he added, “They live in Cork Street.”

“Poor girl, you ought to have asked
her
to dance.”

“I did and she wouldn't.”

“Why on earth?”

“Because she
is
furious with me.”

She laughed and danced up a little closer. They went swirling round in a slow waltz, John remembering that he had noticed Dymphna's height before, the perfect equality of it. She kept very silent, leaning on him just a little with the effect of making him feel most well-formed and able. People kept waving to her, “Hello, Dymphna!” “Hello.” And she waved back at them with brilliant smiles.

“Isn't it tremendous?”

“Wonderful!” He increased his pressure on her back, letting
her feel his body hard against her own. At the end of the dance she drifted apart from him, looking at him level, as gay as New Year's Eve but still with those small shadows he remembered, too large for dimples, in the corners of her cheeks.

They went back to the table and found that Theresa had been dancing sullenly with Bill Collins, who was roaring about everything. He'd been helping himself to the wine that was to go with the cold chicken. When Oonagh and Groarke returned he filled their glasses too.

“Dymphna's the girl,” he said. “You mortgage your shirt to bring her to a dance and she's off with everyone but you. Here's to you, Dymphna! Come on, Oonagh, we'll have the next and the one after that.”

“All right,” she said.

“No,” said John, “she's having the one after with me.”

“Am
I?” she asked.

“Yes.”

Groarke said, “Where's the bar?” And Collins said, “To the bar! Come on, Theresa, we're away to the bar with this fellow.”

Groarke said, “I'm drinking alone.”

“Oh no, you're not. You're drinking with your Theresa here. With me being dropped by Dymphna and taking on Oonagh that leaves you with the one we're all secretly making for. But wait while I down a bit of this chicken.”

Groarke said, “The chicken's for me.”

Collins picked up the wing, “Them's fighting words,” he said in a mock Irish accent.

Groarke said, “You big bellyache,” and hit him so hard that he knocked him into the waiter who happened to be passing behind him. Groarke didn't wait to see what happened, he just walked across the floor and disappeared into the bar.

Collins hadn't fallen but he looked a bit dazed for a moment. He smoothed his hair down and said, “What a queer fellow; look, he's fractured my chicken wing I was eating.”

Oonagh said, “Hadn't someone better—?”

The band had started again and people dancing round them were looking at the table and the waiter dusting himself down as though they thought they might have imagined it all.

Collins said, “Oonagh, that's us.”

They moved away together and left Dymphna sitting between John and Theresa.

Dymphna looked very gay; she said, “You two have this one. I'm going to go and see what's happened to the other man.”

Theresa got up without a word and John took her onto the floor.

She was a little too short for him and she was as cold as a cucumber. He felt that her hand was shaking just a little and said, “I'm awfully sorry about that.”

She answered something he could not hear; it was said in a very low voice, the one she used when she asked, “What are you doing?”

“What did you say?”

“Nothing.”

They danced for a minute or two and he noticed that she didn't dance as well, as sympathetically, as Dymphna. He tried the same trick he had tried with Dymphna, that of increasing the pressure, thinking, They like a bit of blood, anger; that will have livened her up. But it hadn't; she resisted the pressure, and if anything, danced a little further away than before.

He said, “Theresa!”

No reply.

“Theresa!”

Again the small, low, rather deep voice which he could not distinctly hear.

“Theresa, I love you,” he whispered into the ear that was a little too far beneath his mouth. “Please,” he went on, “I love you, that's why I did it. I think of you all the time; when I'm going to meet you I really do feel fantastically weak, I even get breathless. It can only be because I love you. It must be so. And, I'll tell you, I'm going to be rich one day. My darling, I keep thinking of you all the time, I can't think about anyone else. Oonagh's just a blind, Theresa. Dear little Theresa, other girls are only faces and names. I've loved you ever since—I only asked Oonagh to make you jealous. I didn't mean to tell you tonight, I was going to wait. But I couldn't.”

The music stopped and, although it was not the end of the
dance, Theresa walked off the floor. He had to run a couple of steps to catch her up so that their quarrel should not be too apparent.

When they returned to the table, it was empty. The turning mirrors in the central chandelier were on and the band was playing to a ballroom in semi-darkness, a tune of the most tremendous sexual sentimentality. Their colours changed, people were swaying past the table, blue, pink and mauve, sea green and shadowy, in a silence that was undoubtedly conspiratorial although it had only been in existence for about two minutes.

This made it a little easier for him to continue, but not much.

He said, “What do you say, Theresa? Aren't you listening?” and he helped himself to some of the wine, thinking, I'll get another bottle; to hell with that last ten shillings.

Theresa said whatever it was she had said before in the same inaudible voice and this time he took her arm hard, demanding with force that she repeat it.

“Don't be absurd,” she said, pronouncing it “Ab-zurd.”

He could not believe his ears, he felt a great white sheet of rage shaking in his face: all the rebuffs of a term and a half flapping like laundry in front of him in the dimness. He thought, My God, I'm made, she won't have me; she's done it, she's gone where Victoria has gone, where Victoria and Dymphna went; I'm free, liberated. But the moment he thought it, he knew it wasn't true because he was in love with Dymphna.

Where was she? He looked round the empty table and then started watching to see if she and Groarke were on the dance floor. It was quite several moments before he remembered Theresa.

He poured the very last of the wine into her glass and said, “Have some wine, Theresa. Eat up your chicken. I'm going to go and find Groarke.”

They were in the bar. Groarke was leaning against the wall, his tie out of true and the curls of his fox-dark hair ruffled. He was looking at Dymphna, smiling from green eyes while she talked away at him, moving round him restlessly all the time. The movement was like her hand business only more rhythmical; not the rhythm of a western dance so much as that of some
young animal: that of a foal or filly in a field prancing by only moving its legs or turning its head continuously so that the meadow lay more still and the shadows clearer.

By moving before Groarke like that she made it apparent that she drew something from him which was most exciting to her.

When John came up, Groarke said, “Another Englishman; this time a real one.”

“But Groarke,” she said, “Bill Collins is from Waterford.”

“An ape!” Groarke said. “With an ape's brain; a big Mick in the fourth year. Cod Irish.”

“You've got it in for the English, have you? But John's a friend of yours.”

“Me bhoys,” said Groarke, imitating Collins' mock Irish, “that was for
me
. I knew what he meant; and he got it.”

“Ah,” she said to John, “he's a mad fellow this. Come on now, Groarke, put away that drink and come back to the table and make it up with him.”

“You finish it,” he said, giving it to her.

“Easy.” She took and swallowed the half whiskey. “Which of you's to dance with me after beating up the man I brought?”

Groarke ignored them by leaning on the bar and ordering another drink, so she looked at John and did a couple of dance steps.

“Come on,” she said, “it's a heavenly rumba. Oh, the rumba!” She took John's hand and led him back into the ballroom.

They got well into the drums, everybody waving to them, “Hello, Dymphna!” “What happened?” “Who is it with you?” “Who hit old Bill?” But she didn't answer them; she only danced up extremely closely so that he could feel how perfectly they were matched. He could see that she had wonderful breasts, smooth as white cups, and sensed that she loved them without ever thinking about them: equipment.

“This is wonderful,” she said. “Isn't it wonderful?”

When it was over she went in a beeline for the table where someone had opened the new bottle of wine.

“Some for us all. Now who's it all you brought with you, I wonder?” She was looking at Theresa who was sitting there
all alone with the ribbon round her neck. “Isn't it great crack?” she went on. “Go on, have this dance with John if Bill and Oonagh have gone off to get themselves a drink.”