The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,252

Julien died, at least. She was easy to talk to, actually. She would really listen to you when you talked to her, that is one thing I always found rather unusual about her. But she had a way of filling up a room when she came in. She outshined everyone else, you might say, and men there was her husband, Judge McIntyre.

“Judge McIntyre was a terrible sot. He was always drunk. And what a quarrelsome drunk. I tell you I had to go looking for him more than once and bring him home from the Irish bars on Magazine Street. You know, the Mayfairs weren’t his kind of people, really. He was an educated man, lace curtain Irish, to be sure. Yet I think Mary Beth made him feel inferior. She was always saying little things to him, such as that he ought to put his napkin in his lap, or not smoke his cigars in the dining room, or that he was biting the edge of his silver when he ate, and the noise annoyed her. He was eternally offended by her. But I think he really loved her. That’s why she could hurt him so easily. He really loved her. You would have had to have known her to understand. She wasn’t beautiful. That wasn’t it. But she was … she was absolutely captivating! I could tell you about her and the young men, but then I don’t want to talk about all that. But what I was trying to say was that they would sit there at the table till all hours after dinner, Mary Beth and Judge McIntyre and Julien, of course, and Clay Mayfair, too, while he was there. I never saw people who liked to talk so much after dinner.

“Julien could put away half a fifth of brandy. And little Stella would fall asleep in his lap. Ah, Stella with the ringlets, dear pretty Stella. And beautiful little Belle. She’d come wandering in with her doll. And Millie Dear. They called her Millie Dear then but they stopped later on. She was younger than Belle, but she, you know, sort of watched out for Belle. It took a long time to catch on about Belle. You just thought she was sweet at first, an angel of a girl, if you know what I mean. There were some other cousins who used to come. Seems Julien’s boy, Garland, was around plenty after he came home from school. And Cortland, I really liked Cortland. And for a while there was talk he might marry Millie, but she was only a first cousin, being Rémy’s girl, and people didn’t do that sort of thing anymore. Millie has never married. What a sad thing …

“But you know, Judge McIntyre was the kind of Irishman who really can’t stand to be around his wife, if you follow my meaning. He had to be with men, drinking and arguing all the time, and not men like Julien, but men like himself, hard-drinking, hard-talking Irishmen. He spent a great deal of time downtown at his club, but many an evening he went to those rougher drinking places on Magazine Street.

“When he was home, he was always very noisy. He was a good judge however. He wouldn’t drink till he came home from court, and since he always came home early he had plenty of time to be completely drunk by ten o’clock. Then he would go wandering, and round midnight Julien would say, ‘Richard, I think you had better go look for him.’

“Julien just took it all in stride. He thought Judge McIntyre was funny. He would laugh at anything Judge McIntyre said. Judge McIntyre would go on and on about Ireland and the political situation over there, and Julien would wait until he was finished and say cheerfully and with a twinkle in his eye, ‘I don’t care if they all kill each other.’ Judge McIntyre would go crazy. Mary Beth would laugh and shake her head and kick Julien under the table. But Judge McIntyre was so far gone in those last years. How he ever managed to live so long I cannot imagine. Didn’t die till 1925, three months after Mary Beth died. They said it was pneumonia. The hell it was pneumonia! They found him in the gutter, you know. And it was Christmas Eve and so cold the pipes were freezing. Pneumonia. I heard when Mary Beth was dying, she was in such pain they gave