3. Cornelius Dowley

Honeysuckle again scented the dusty road, the fuchsia hedges reddened. Villana and her grandmother had tea beneath the strawberry trees, Tom went on his usual errands. By July the iron supports of the bridge had been set in concrete, twelve on the mainland, twelve on the island. Alien, perfectly upright, the line of their height on either side sloping to meet the level of the land, their graceless presence was only ugly. The girders that were to stretch between them lay among rocks and gorse, those resting on the ground lost in a growth of cowparsley and meadow daisies. Sheds of corrugated iron had been erected, trees felled, undergrowth cleared. The place of the bridge had already acquired a personality that had not been there before, a fleeting spirit of its own, imposed by labourers.

In the Rose of Tralee boarding-house, on a hot afternoon of that same July, Mrs Moledy ran the tip of her tongue over her lips and called John James her king. Earlier she had sprinkled the sheets with eau de Cologne, which was her way. As casually as she could manage, she said:

‘Darling, is there no chance at all I could be invited?’

‘Invited to what?’

‘The wedding breakfast, pet. I wouldn’t come to the church; that wouldn’t be permitted for me. But what harm would there be in attending the breakfast afterwards? I’d only stay five minutes.’

He made a motion with his head, indicative of shaking it.

He’d had to walk through litter because the summer visitors had arrived. It was a disgrace, the litter there was in the streets, cigarette-packets and sweet-papers everywhere, orange peel and banana skins. The promenade was a holy show, no better than a zoo.

‘I would love above everything to be invited, darling.’

He couldn’t arrange it, he protested. There was nothing he could do. After a silence, Mrs Moledy said:

‘Is there a chance we could have the wedding breakfast in the Rose of Tralee, darling?’

‘Here? Here, in this house?’

‘Why not, pet?’

‘People would think it strange.’

Mrs Moledy did not accept that. She’d had a world of experience in catering, she pointed out. She cooked food for her boarders every day of her life; when the house was full she was run off her feet and still she managed. It wouldn’t be the first wedding breakfast there had been at the Rose of Tralee; a day-and-night licence was easily obtained, midnight to midnight, any alcoholic beverage you’d care to name.

‘Absolutely impossible.’

She pouted. In a moment she said:

‘Darling, I’d do anything to be pals with Villana.’

‘Pals?’

‘To be able to say hullo to her. To get on to terms, pet.’

‘Say hullo to her in a shop. She goes into Lett’s and the London and Newcastle.’

It’ll be unusual for poor Villana, what she has to face now.’

He did not understand this, so said nothing. His sister was marrying the man; she had chosen to and she intended to. You couldn’t control Villana.