The gathering - By Anne Enright Page 0,12

he’s never there when you’re looking. Only to stop him sneaking off I suppose.’

Then she walks back towards her chair by the door. She is only nineteen after all. And he is only twenty-three.

‘I have a friend who owns a car,’ he says, all of a sudden.

‘Do you?’ She stops; interested and pert.

‘He should be here any minute, he should be here by now.’

‘I’d love a go in a car,’ says Ada. ‘I’d be mad for a go in a car.’

And she swivels about to sit in her chair.

Oh for a rope to pull it from under her–Nugent skidding across the room to catch her in his arms. They could kiss in black and white, she turning away for the caption:

Stop!!

Because it is not only Lent, but spring. How else would you have it? Ada Merriman is beautiful and Lamb Nugent is no better than he should be, and this is all we need to know–that when she walked in through the door, and sat with such quiet grace on that little oval-backed chair, he saw a life in which no one owed anyone a thing. Not a jot.

A car pulls up outside. Nugent hears the engine’s throbbing and the look he gives to Ada turns to one of pain and farewell–as if their situation were in some way impossible. But it is not impossible, and the alarm that flares between them now is just another kind of delight.

There is nothing that they do alone. Not any more.

Together they turn, as Charlie Spillane arrives through the door, raffish with drink, hearty with promises broken and appointments missed. His eye checks Nugent leaning up against the front desk–then he casts about him until he sees the figure in blue, sitting at the wall by the door. Oh.

‘Ma’am,’ he says, doffing his (imagined) bowler hat, ‘I hope this fellow has been keeping you amused.’

And Ada laughs.

Just like that. With a sweep of his arm, Charlie has changed the maths of it–of his future and of my past.

Here are the two friends, leaving Ada Merriman.

Charlie indicates the hotel door to his pal and walks outside. He sits back into the Bullnose Morris and picks up his driving gloves. Then he rubs his face with them. He rubs his face as a man who has stopped crying, after crying for a long time. Nugent climbs in beside him. Charlie gives her some choke, struggles over the sharp hump of the forgotten chock, and drives on.

Conways is dark. They circle the Rotunda and stop back on Parnell Street where they find a lock-in in the back room of the Blue Lion–an unholy pub. There is an air of recent hurt; the smell of something burnt coming out of the jakes in the yard.

‘A bottle and a lemonade,’ says Charlie.

They taste their drink and look with circumspection at the murderous clientele of the Blue Lion. Charlie has a small opinion about the car while Nugent examines the grain of the wood and the shine of the low brass rail.

On the way home, Nugent tilts out of his seat to stand with his head a little higher than the car’s front window, and he lets the night air lap his face. As they bowl along the Green, he glances at the girls who are waiting, even in Lent, for the nobs to come out of the Shelbourne: a series of white ovals, their faces twist around like turning leaves, at the sound of a car.

He plumps back into his seat as they slide to a stop, some distance beyond his door.

‘Give it a look, will you?’ says Charlie, meaning the brake drum, split open on the table in Nugent’s digs.

‘I will,’ he says, and waves Charlie off at the front door.

Inside, Nugent looks around his little room; the narrow bed, the window, with two lace curtains like hair parted over a little square face and tied on either side. He looks at his small table–the broken brakes of the Bullnose Morris, beautiful as a picture of apples in the moonlight. He starts to unbutton his shirt, standing in the darkness. His shirt opens one button at a time. It parts in a V over the flesh of his chest. Further and further down. And Nugent is on his knees. He pulls off his shirt on his knees, and swings it around behind him, so the buttons hit his back, once, twice; and then he starts his night prayers.

Here she comes.

Lizzy.

His sister. Younger than him. She died. The