"And how's your auntie now, Barry?"
She handles infernal teakettles as she handles potatoes: gracefully, naturally, and all too frequently. There's work in her hands; years and years of brooms and lye and washrags.
He's weary, unclean; still nauseous with incomplete revenge. "She's poorly." Question, not fact. Not certain of the veracity of the observed condition. His head falls, hand falls, stubs a Woodbine into the poxy tabletop. "Rather poorly."
Brigid is easy in her movements, comfortable in body and house and society. Not brilliant, mouth softening from the Spanish arch typical of Galway. Unusual summer light has freckled the tensile forearms, arms with muscles of hemp and fingers not far removed from a farmer's. "And sure, that's a shame for you, darling, with your Julie only gone a year. The consumption, was it?" Placid eyes, misty, quiet, unassuming; ordinary blue, common rain or bitter sun. She seems to see through nobody; takes them at face value, at their foundations.
"It was that, the TB, and so it is with my auntie." He can't look at the common woman opposite, common as linen and bed-pillows and tobacco. His hands are shaking, shivering, still sick-smelling with Julie in the cold convent bed. Brigid is a peerless foil to the child, cracked, haggard, consumptive.
Barry clenches his fingers against the shaking, against Brigid finding out his lie. 384 days. He lies twice for each, 668 lies, the one to Julie and the one to Brigid, every day of his damp and dolourous life.
"It's a curse on this land, with the damp and the smoke. Twice this year I've had mould growing right on my overcoat, would'ya believe it? I do think it's perfectly sweet to visit your dear auntie every day. 'Tis powerful kind." She is assured of his motives then, complacent. Only the perfectly honest, he thinks, harbour no suspicions of their fellows.
Brigid swallows bitter tea ahead of speaking her mind. She is common, a charwoman, perceptive of those around her, the tweeds, nuns, barristers, schoolgirls. Euclid is far and away too intricate for her midwifely brain. Barry Casserly, it's hiding something you are, and let's have it out before it bursts in your belly like a rotten appendix. Her face is blank, complacent, waterproof, a shopworn and reliable mask.
Across the ashtray table, he is in other lands. Four feet is impassable miles between watchful, witchful woman and raw stunned boy. "And wouldn't your auntie be now in the same hospital where your Julie died, Barry?" She might be asking the price of onions. This onion is barbed, armed, gauged to deliver, and strikes home.
His hands shake as he lights another cigarette.