Brooklyn Page 0,43

Kehoe’s tone, as she tried to smile, caused, Eilis felt, a sadness to come into the room. She believed that Mrs. Kehoe was giving her too much without knowing her well enough and just now had also said too much. She did not want Mrs. Kehoe to become close to her or come to depend on her in any way. Eilis left silence for a few moments, even though she knew that this might make her seem ungrateful. She nodded almost formally at Mrs. Kehoe.

“When will the others know that I am here for good?” she asked eventually.

“In their own good time. It’s none of their business anyway.”

As she took in the implications of what Mrs. Kehoe had done and the trouble it was now likely to cause her with her fellow lodgers, Eilis wished she had been left alone in her old bedroom.

“I hope they won’t blame me.”

“Pay no attention to any of them. I don’t think either of us needs to lose a night’s sleep over them.”

Eilis stood up straight, attempting to make herself taller, and stared coldly at Mrs. Kehoe. It was clear to her that her landlady’s last remark carried with it the firm idea that she and Eilis stood apart from the other lodgers and were prepared to intimate to them that they had conspired in this. Eilis believed that this was a piece of gross presumption on Mrs. Kehoe’s part but also that the decision to give her, the most recently arrived, the best room in the house not only would cause bitterness and difficulty between herself and Patty, Diana, Miss McAdam and Sheila Heffernan but would come to mean, in time, that Mrs. Kehoe herself would feel free to call in the favour she had done her.

She could, Eilis saw, do this if she needed something urgently, or allow it to cause a familiarity in their relationship, a sort of friendship or close connection. As they stood in the room, Eilis felt almost angry with Mrs. Kehoe, and this feeling, mixed with tiredness, seemed to give her courage.

“It’s always better to be honest,” she said, imitating Rose when Rose found her dignity or sense of propriety challenged in any way. “I mean with everybody,” she added.

“When you’ve gone through the world like I have,” Mrs. Kehoe replied, “you’ll find that that only works some of the time.”

Eilis looked at her landlady, not flinching at the wounded aggression in the way her look was returned. She was determined not to speak again, no matter what Mrs. Kehoe said. She felt the older woman’s irritation directed against her as though she had betrayed her in some incalculable way, until she realized that giving her this room, the act of generosity, had released something in Mrs. Kehoe, some deep resentment against the world, that Mrs. Kehoe was now putting carefully back in its place.

“The bathroom as I said is down the corridor,” she finally said. “And I’m leaving the key here.”

She put the key on a side table and left the room, banging the door so that the whole house would hear her.

Eilis wondered if the others would ever believe her if she told them that she had not asked for the room. She avoided the kitchen at breakfast-time and, on meeting Diana at the bathroom door on the second morning, rushed by her without saying a word. She knew, however, that when the weekend came it would be impossible to avoid a discussion with the others. Thus on the Friday evening, when Mrs. Kehoe had left the kitchen, and Miss McAdam said that she would like to speak to her alone, Eilis was not surprised. Under Miss McAdam’s watchful gaze, as though she were a prisoner on parole who might try to abscond, she lingered in the kitchen after all the others had gone.

“I suppose you heard what happened,” Miss McAdam said to her.

Eilis tried to look blank.

“You had better sit down.”

Miss McAdam moved over to the kettle as it began to boil and she filled the teapot before she spoke again.

“Do you know why Miss Keegan left?” she asked.

“Why should I know?”

“So you don’t know? I thought so. Well, that Kehoe woman knows and all the others know.”

“Where has Miss Keegan gone? Was she in trouble?”

“To Long Island. And for good reasons.”

“What happened?”

“She was followed home.” Miss McAdam’s eyes seemed to glitter with excitement as she spoke. She poured the tea slowly.

“Followed?”

“Not one night but two, or maybe more for all I know.”

“You mean