Brooklyn Page 0,94

to the date to alert Miss Fortini and Mrs. Kehoe to her late arrival. She wondered if it would be wise to use illness as an excuse. She told Tony about the visit to Rose’s grave and about Nancy’s engagement, assuring him that she kept his ring close to her so that she could think about him when she was alone.

At lunchtime she put a towel and her bathing costume and a pair of sandals into a bag and walked to Nancy’s house, where George Sheridan was going to collect them. It had been a beautiful morning, the air sweet and still, and it was hot, almost stifling in the house as they waited for George to arrive. When they heard the sound of the horn beeping in the station wagon he used to make deliveries they went outside. Eilis was surprised to see Jim Farrell as he held the door open for her and then got in beside her, allowing Nancy to sit beside George in the front passenger seat.

Eilis nodded coldly at Jim and sat as far away from him as she could. She had spotted him at mass the previous Sunday but had been careful to avoid him. As they moved out of the town, she realized that he, and not Annette, was coming with them; she was angry with Nancy for not having told her. She would have cancelled had she known. She was further infuriated when George and Jim began a discussion about some rugby game as the car made its way along the Osbourne Road towards Vinegar Hill and then turned right towards Curracloe. She thought for a moment of interrupting the two men to tell them that in Brooklyn there was a Vinegar Hill too but that it was nothing like the Vinegar Hill that overlooked Enniscorthy, even though it was called after it. Anything, she thought, to shut them up. Instead, she decided that she would not speak once to Jim Farrell, not even acknowledge his presence, and that as soon as there was a gap in the conversation she would introduce a topic on which he could not contribute.

When George had parked the car and George and Nancy moved ahead towards the boardwalk that led over the sand dunes to the beach, Jim Farrell spoke to her very quietly, asking her how her mother was, saying that he and his mother and father had been to Rose’s funeral mass. His mother, he said, had been very fond of her in the golf club. “All in all,” he said, “it was the saddest thing that has happened in the town for a long time.”

She nodded. If he wanted her to think well of him, she thought, then she should let him know as soon as possible that she had no intention of doing so, but this was hardly the moment.

“It must be difficult being home,” he said. “Although it must be nice for your mother.”

She turned and smiled sadly at him. They did not speak again until they reached the strand and caught up with George and Nancy.

Jim, it turned out, had not brought a towel or his togs and said that the water was, in any case, probably too cold. Eilis looked at Nancy and then shot a withering glance at Jim for Nancy to witness. As Jim removed his shoes and socks and rolled up the bottoms of his trousers and went down to the water, the other three began to change. If this had been years ago, Eilis thought, she would have worried during the entire journey from Enniscorthy about her swimsuit and its style, about whether she was too unshapely or awkward on the beach, or what George and Jim would think of her. But now, however, that she was still suntanned from the boat and from her trips to Coney Island with Tony, she felt oddly confident as she walked down the strand, passing Jim Farrell paddling at the edge of the water without saying a word to him, wading out and then, as the first high wave approached, swimming into it as it broke and then out beyond it.

She knew he was watching her and the idea that she should really have splashed him as she passed him made her smile. For a second it came into her mind as something she could tell Rose and that Rose would love, but then she realized with a sense of regret close to an actual pain that Rose