Small Things Like These(17)

When Furlong handed her the notes, she put them in the drawer then came out from behind the counter with the change and stood in close, turning her back on the tables.

‘You’ll put me right if I’m wrong, I know, Bill – but did I hear you had a run-in with herself above at the convent?’

Furlong’s hand tightened round the change and his gaze dropped to the skirting board, following it along the base of the wall, as far as the corner.

‘I wouldn’t call it a run-in but I had a morning up there, aye.’

‘Tis no affair of mine, you understand, but you know you’d want to watch over what you’d say about what’s there? Keep the enemy close, the bad dog with you and the good dog will not bite. You know yourself.’

He looked down at the pattern of black, interlocking rings on the brown carpet.

‘Take no offence, Bill,’ she said, touching his sleeve. ‘Tis no business of mine, as I’ve said, but surely you must know these nuns have a finger in every pie.’

He stood back then and faced her. ‘Surely they’ve only as much power as we give them, Mrs Kehoe?’

‘I wouldn’t be too sure.’ She paused then and looked at him the way hugely practical women sometimes looked at men, as though they weren’t men at all but foolish boys. More than once, maybe more than several times, Eileen had done the same.

‘Don’t mind me,’ she said, ‘but you’ve worked hard, the same as myself, to get to where you are now. You’ve reared a fine family of girls – and you know there’s nothing only a wall separating that place from St Margaret’s.’

Furlong took no offence, softened. ‘I do know, Mrs Kehoe.’

‘Can’t I count on one hand the number of girls from around here that ever got on well who didn’t walk those halls,’ she said, splaying her palm.

‘I’m sure that’s fact.’

‘They belong to different orders,’ she went on, ‘but believe you me, they’re all the one. You can’t side against one without damaging your chances with the other.’

‘Thank you, Mrs Kehoe. I’m much obliged to you for saying.’

‘Happy Christmas, Bill.’

‘Many happy returns,’ Furlong said, pressing the change she’d given him back into her hand.

*



When he went out, it was snowing. White flakes were coming down out of the sky and landing on the town and all around. He stood looking down at his trousers, the toes of his boots, then screwed his cap down tight on his head and buttoned up his coat. For a while, he simply walked along the quayside with his hands deep in his pockets, thinking over what he’d been told and watching the river flowing darkly along, drinking the snow. He felt a bit freer now, being out in the open air, with nothing else pressing for the time being and another year’s work done, behind him, at his back. The urgency to run the one errand he had to run and get on home was falling away. Almost light-heartedly he turned under the lights of town, the long, zig-zagging strands of multi-coloured bulbs. Music was coming from a speaker and a boy’s tall, unbroken voice was singing: O holy night, the stars are brightly shining. Passing the tree outside the Town Hall, he caught his toe on a paving stone and almost tripped and found himself blaming Mrs Kehoe, who’d made him take a hot whiskey, for his cold, and had given him a huge bowl of sherry trifle. Here and there, he stopped to look into shop fronts, at the merchandise, the snaking lengths of tinsel, so many shining things: Waterford Crystal, sets of stainless-steel cutlery, china tea sets, bottles of perfume, christening mugs. At Forristal’s, his gaze rested on black velvet trays stabbed through to display engagement rings and wedding bands, gold and silver watches. Bracelets draped from a false arm – and there were lockets on chains, necklaces.

At Stafford’s old shop, he stared as a child might at a hurley stick and sliotar, nets of glass marbles, toy soldiers, plasticine, Lego, draughts and chess sets, at some things which had lasted. Two dolls in frilly dresses sat stiffly with their arms out, their fingers almost touching the pane, as though they were asking to be lifted. When he went in and asked Mrs Stafford if she had a jigsaw of a farm in five hundred pieces, she said the only jigsaws they kept now were for children, that there was little demand for the more difficult ones anymore, then asked if she might help him find something else. Furlong shook his head but bought a bag of the Lemon’s jellies hanging on one of the hooks behind her head, as he did not like to go back out with one arm as long as the other.

At Joyce’s Furniture, he caught his reflection in a full-length mirror that was for sale and decided he should go on to the barber’s, for a haircut. When he looked in, there was a long queue but he pushed the door and at once a little bell tinkled. He took his place at the end of the bench to wait his turn beside a red-haired man he did not know and four red-haired boys who much resembled him. Sinnott, with one too many taken, was in the chair with the barber standing over him finishing a short back and sides. The barber nodded solemnly at Furlong in the mirror and carried on with the shears for a while before putting the shears down and brushing the hairs off the back of Sinnott’s neck, and emptying out the ashtray. When the butts landed in the bucket, some hair singed a little, giving out a bitter smell, and Furlong thought over what Eileen had been told about the barber’s son, the young electrician, of his diagnosis, and how the lad had been given little time. Some talk rose up then, between the men, and a few rough jokes were bandied, in disguise, on account of there being children there.