Peering out of the window, Mary considered the dress she’d carefully washed on a delicate cycle. If she sat at the kitchen table she could keep an eye on the weather and, if need be, whip it onto the line. Pat had worn some class of a dress to the football match, but she’d lost her nerve and added her school raincoat. Mary had sported a wine corduroy skirt and a ribbed pink polo neck. Neither had deigned to wear the school beret, and they’d both worn nylon stockings and shoes with heels – which they’d regretted when they’d got to the muddy field.
Tom played centre forward. Mary had seen him before in Crossarra, where a bad-tempered old cousin of his had kept the village post office, but he used not to be round Lissbeg that much. Nuala Devane was on the sideline, wearing her gym frock and beret. She and Tom were dating at the time. Nuala’s dad had the dancehall in Sheep Street, and her mam sold tickets at the door. You’d see Nuala herself there, selling Tayto and red lemonade through a hatch, and Tom would hang round chatting to her until she was free to come out. He had loads of friends. There were the lads in the GAA, and the crowd at the Brothers, and everyone seemed to know him from the post office, where he helped out. Mary, who was an only child, had never needed to work when she was at school. She’d thought about going to England to train as a nurse after doing her Leaving Cert. But that hadn’t happened. Because, from the day she’d seen him shoot the winning goal, she’d known she’d marry Tom.
The day after the match he was hanging round the horse trough in Broad Street, with a crowd of other fellows from the Brothers. Pat didn’t want to cross the road in case they’d be seen by Benny, who was always up at the convent window, snooping. But Mary didn’t give a hoot for Sister Benignus. There was no harm in talking to a fellow bang in the middle of town in the full light of day. Ger had been there, too, though by then he’d left school. He’d been put into the butcher’s shop the day he’d turned fifteen.
Mary was amazed when she discovered that Ger was Tom’s best friend. Their friendship had begun in their first year at the Brothers’ school when Tom was already a football hero and Ger was a scrawny runt. Brother Hugh had nicknamed them The Warrior and The Weasel. The name had stuck because Brother Hugh kept egging the kids on to use it and, according to Tom, Ger had no way to fight back. So, being Tom, he’d stuck up for Ger in the yard. That was Tom. He was different to the other fellows, the way he’d be quiet and gentle. He was always off doing jobs for his aunt Maggie – setting her spuds, fetching her shopping, and sitting keeping her company by the fire. Her ramshackle house in its sloping field gave Mary the shivers in those days, and Maggie was a sour old besom. But Tom said she needed him and, apparently, that was that. He was a fool to himself but, in the big picture, that had never mattered to Mary. And he’d fallen for her just as she’d fallen for him.
A spatter of rain against the window caused Mary to cast a complacent look at the washing she hadn’t hung out. It hadn’t taken long for Nuala Devane to get the message. Indeed, if you wanted Mary’s opinion, Tom and Nuala hadn’t really been dating at all. Not properly. And if Nuala had really wanted him, she could have got out from behind the hatch when he came into the dancehall, and worn something decent when she went to watch a match. She could have kicked, too, when Mary moved in on him, instead of going round with a puss on her. Still, none of it mattered to Mary, then or now. She and Tom were made for each other and that was the end of that.
Except that Tom could never turn his back on a lame duck. One day, when they were all still at school, Ger was messing about over at the horse trough. It was full of water then, not planted with flowers like the council had it now. Ger was walking the edge of it, like a tightrope walker. He was a stringy little sliver of nothing, with a mean, wizened face on him, and you could see he was only doing it for attention, and no one had even glanced at him till another lad shoved him in. The crowd was laughing and jeering, and calling Ger a wet weasel, when Tom appeared from nowhere and grabbed the bully by the neck. He had twice his strength and he held the boy’s head underwater till he was choking, and then he heaved him out and left him sprawling on the road. No one ever shouted ‘Weasel’ after that happened and, from that day on, Ger had clung to Tom like grim death. Which was fair enough when he was still at school, with Brother Hugh being a bastard, but not by the time Mary and Tom got engaged. If you asked Mary, that was taking liberties. Ger was just another Maggie Casey, needing care and demanding Tom’s time.
Having said that, she’d loved the way Tom had always been popular. People didn’t just envy her because of how he looked, or how he treated her: he was a good man, and everyone knew it, and Mary was proud to know she’d been his choice. Neither a day nor a night went past now when she didn’t find herself missing him.
But sitting here remembering did no good. Crossly, Mary stood up and shook out her newly washed dress – you wouldn’t want to hang it out all crumpled and half dry. She was glad Pat was home again and the evenings were drawing out. After Tom died she’d divided up the bungalow and taken Louisa as a lodger. But she was away seeing her own family in England. That was how it was with Louisa: she’d skite off if she fancied it. Still, whatever you might think of the way her rat of a son had treated Hanna, she was a decent woman, and company in the evenings, so you’d miss her. And however good Hanna herself might be, the fact was that she and Mary had never got along. Tom had been stone mad about the child and, by then, Mary had realised that he needed careful handling. The first time she’d complained about the hours he spent at Maggie’s place, she’d thought she’d have him toeing the line at once. It had been the shock of her life when she’d found that, for all he was gentle, he could be stubborn. But, having lost a battle, she’d known better than to start a war. Instead, when Hanna got old enough, she’d fixed for her to go round after school each day to give Maggie a hand. It wasn’t until the dark nights after he died that she’d confessed to herself how much she’d resented the time Tom spent with Hanna, and that sending her round to Maggie’s place had killed two birds with one stone.
Draping the damp dress across the top of the laundry basket, Mary told herself firmly that things had worked out for the best. Maggie’s will had left Hanna her house and the scrubby clifftop field. And damn glad of it Hanna had been when she’d needed someplace to live after her divorce. She’d stormed out on her cheating husband and turned up on Mary’s doorstop when her poor daughter, Jazz, was only fourteen, and no one could say Mary hadn’t thrown open her door. But, apparently, Maggie’s dump of a place was preferable to life in her mother’s bungalow: Hanna had renovated Maggie’s and moved there as soon as Jazz finished school. People were never grateful, thought Mary. So, when you’d had a hand in the way things worked out, generally it was wisest to say nothing. And life moved on. Hanna’s had and Pat’s would now. The past was dead and gone, and best not thought about.
Nevertheless, with her eye on the rain, Mary kept on thinking. Being alone a lot made you do that.
Long before she and Tom had got engaged she could see how things would be when they were married. Ger would be turning up all the time and Tom would be telling her Ger was lonely and missing his only friend. It had taken a while to think of a way to get shot of him. Then she’d noticed Ger had developed a bit of a yen for her. She hadn’t set out to chat him up. She’d hardly looked at him, really. But she might have strung him along just a bit. Nothing that Tom could have seen, of course, because she wouldn’t have taken the risk.