Two weeks later, on the day that news reached Dublin that Adolf Hitler had put a bullet in his head, my mother wandered into a cheap jewelry shop on Coppinger Row and bought herself a wedding ring, a small golden band with a tiny gemstone to ornament it. She still hadn’t moved out of the flat on Chatham Street but had reached a discreet understanding with Jack Smoot, who made his peace with her presence by rarely acknowledging it. To make herself useful, she kept the place clean and used what little money she had to ensure a meal was on the table when they came home from work, for Seán had found a place at Guinness’s after all, although he wasn’t particularly enjoying it.
“I carry bags of hops around the place half the day,” he told her as he lay in the bath one evening soothing his muscles while my mother sat on the bed in the next room, her back turned to him but the door half open so they could talk. It was a peculiar room, she thought. Nothing on the walls except a St. Brigid’s cross and a photograph of Pope Pius XII. Next to that was the photograph that had been taken on the day they arrived in Dublin. The boy had done a poor job of it, for although Seán was smiling and Smoot looked half human, her body was split down the middle by the frame, her head turned to her right in annoyance at the way Smoot had pushed her. A single dresser stood against one wall, in which the clothes of both lads were mixed up together as if it didn’t matter who owned what. And the bed itself was hardly big enough for one, let alone the pair of them sleeping top-to-tail. It was no wonder, she told herself, that she heard the most peculiar sounds emerging from there during the nights. The poor boys must have had a terrible time trying to sleep.
“My shoulders are bruised,” continued Seán, “my back is sore and I’m suffering terrible headaches from the smell of the brewery. I may look out for something else soon because I don’t know how long I can stand it there.”
“Jack seems to enjoy it all the same,” said my mother.
“He’s made of stronger stuff than me so.”
“What else would you do?”
Seán took a long time to reply and she listened as he splashed around in the tub. I wonder was there any part of her that wanted to turn around at that moment and let her eyes rest on the body of the young lad in his bath, whether she might have ever considered walking over without an ounce of shame and offering to share it with him? He’d been kind to her and was a handsome devil, or so she told me. It would have been difficult for her not to develop something along the lines of an attachment.
“I don’t know,” he said eventually.
“There’s something in your voice that tells me that you do know.”
“There’s one idea I have,” he said, sounding a little embarrassed. “But I don’t know if I’d be fit for it.”
“Tell me so.”
“You won’t laugh?”
“I might,” she said. “I could do with a good laugh as it happens.”
“Well, there’s the newspapers,” he said after a brief pause. “The Irish Times, of course, and the Irish Press. I have a notion that I could write things for them.”
“What kind of things?”
“Bits of news, you know. I did a bit of writing back home in Ballincollig. Stories and what have you. A few poems. No good, most of them, but still and all. I think I could get better if I was given a chance.”
“Do you mean a journalist?” she asked.
“I suppose so, yes. Am I daft?”
“What’s daft about it? Sure someone has to do it, don’t they?”
“Jack doesn’t think it’s a good idea.”
“And what does that matter? He’s not your wife, is he? You can make your own decisions.”
“I don’t know if they’d even take me on. But Jack doesn’t want to stay on at Guinness’s forever either. He has an idea for his own pub.”
“That’s just what Dublin needs. Another pub.”
“Not here. In Amsterdam.”
“What?” asked my mother, raising her voice in surprise. “Sure why would he want to go there?”
“I suppose it’s the Dutch side of him,” said Seán. “He’s never been but he’s heard great things about the place.”
“What kind of things?”
“That it’s different from Ireland.”
“Well, that can hardly come as a great revelation. There’s canals and the like there, isn’t there?”
“Different in other ways than that.”
He said nothing more and my mother began to worry that he’d fallen asleep and slipped beneath the surface of the water.
“I have a bit of news myself,” she told him, hoping that he’d answer quickly or she’d have no choice but to turn around.
“Go on so.”
“I have an interview for a job tomorrow morning.”
“You do not!”
“I do,” she said as he splashed away again, using the small bit of soap that she’d picked up from a market stall a few days earlier and presented to Smoot, partly as a gift for allowing her to stay and partly as encouragement for him to have a wash.
“Good girl yourself,” said Seán. “Where is it anyway?”
“The Dáil.”
“The what?”
“The Dáil. On Kildare Street. You know, the parliament building.”
“I know what the Dáil is,” replied Seán, laughing. “I’m just surprised, that’s all. What class of a job is it at all? Are you to be a TD? Are we to have our first female Taoiseach?”
“I’d be serving in the tearoom. I’m to meet a Mrs. Hennessy at eleven o’clock and she’s going to give me the once-over.”
“Well, that’s a bit of good news anyway. Do you think you’ll—”
A key in the lock, it stuck for a moment, was taken out and reinserted, and when my mother heard Smoot walking into the other room she moved over a little on the bed so that he wouldn’t notice her sitting there, her eyes resting on the crack in the wall that looked like the journey of the River Shannon through the Midlands.
“There you are,” he said, using a tender sort of voice that she had never heard him employ before. “Now, there’s a fine sight to return home to.”
“Jack,” snapped Seán immediately, his tone different too, quick to silence him. “Catherine’s inside.”
My mother turned around on the bed and glanced toward the front room at the same moment that Smoot looked across, and her glance, she told me afterward, was torn between the fine bare chest on Seán, muscled and hairless as he lay in the dirty water, and the face on Smoot, which was growing more annoyed by the second. Confused, uncertain what mistake she had made exactly, she turned back around, glad to hide her blushing face.
“Hello, Jack,” she cried cheerfully.
“Kitty.”
“Back from the slog?”
He said nothing and there was a long silence from the living room and my mother longed to turn around to see what was going on. The two boys weren’t talking aloud but even in the silence she could tell there was some class of a conversation going on between them, even if it was only through the way that they looked at each other. Finally, Seán spoke.