The gathering - By Anne Enright Page 0,40
so it’s not so much a tryst he is suggesting, as a lift.
‘You said you’d like a go in a car,’ he says looking down at the path between them.
She fixes her eyes on the same spot and lifts her eyebrows to say, ‘Can I bring a friend?’
So Nugent is the lover in all this, Charlie is the transport, Ada is the wraith and lilith the lovely girl the fallen woman the sad whore the poor orphan the safe bet, whatever way you look at it, and with her is Ellen, who is company for Charlie and just a maid.
Nugent and Ada sit in the back of the Morris and the daylight suits her surprisingly well. There is fresh blood in her cheeks and her hair is thick in the wind, and he feels stupidly easy there beside her, he feels like he could just talk–her understanding is so direct. A man could speak to a woman like this and feel like a better person, he could forget altogether the night thoughts and the struggles of his conscience, the gaping wound of his soul that opens–in some dream or waking dream–in his chest.
It is gone, this queer fragment, it is whipped away by the festive drive in an open-topped car, in cavalcade with every other car in Dublin, now that Lent is over, and the races are on. Nugent’s hand is steady and the girl beside him is as frank and poetical as an animal, and so he is safe. With Ada, he is safe.
And so they drive–up the Navan Road, past the Guinness estates where Charlie lifts his imaginary hat to give a cheer for the lovely brew.
‘Hoo hoo,’ he says. ‘Hoo hoo!’
And they are having a grand time now, singing a song–what is it?–‘The Harp that Once’, ‘Silent O Moyle’–big, open-air songs. Charlie belting them out in his fine English baritone, looking at everything but the road, so the view that Ada has is of his shoulder blades, covered in fat and resting on the top of the seat in front of her, the flutter of his scarf reaching for her as she sits behind, the tips of his waxed moustache, signalling over his shoulder, now and then, cheerful thoughts of manliness and cleanliness and, if you considered them long enough, a tickling sensation on the inside of your thighs.
But Ada, we are sure, does not think like this. Ada has suffered enough from our imputations. She turns to Nugent as he talks of the races to come, and the possible odds, and the need for a clear hand from the minister of finance in all of this, because everyone likes a flutter, it is as much an Irishman’s right as any other Christian man.
It is surprising to hear so much out of him at one time. Ada gets the feeling that Nugent speaks all at once or not at all. He is the kind of man that women were told to ‘draw out’, in those days–hard work, in other words, and fantastically easy prey.
But it might be compassion as much as anything else, that leads her to touch him, there in the open-topped car. Or thoughtlessness. She is only trying to draw his attention, but to what? Lord and Lady Talbot de Malahide driving the whole way on the wrong side of the road, with the chauffeur’s gloved hand stuck to the horn. Or something quieter, a straw horse in a farmer’s field propping up a sign that says, ‘Drinks Here’.
It could be a response to something he has said, ‘They’ve made such a hames of it already,’ meaning, of course, the Free State government; or a more intimate comment, like, ‘Personally, I’ve never minded a spot of rain.’
The impulse is, at any rate, to touch him.
How will she manage it? She will lay her finger on his arm. She will lay her whole palm on his forearm. Or, later, she might take the crook of his elbow under the hinge of her wrist, and link him as they walk to the rails. And whichever one of these she does, she will feel Nugent flinch away.
Here is Charlie in front of her, bowing as he presents the open mouth of a bag of boiled sweets.
‘Oh, comfort me with apples,’ he says, before remembering himself and turning to offer first choice to Ellen, the friendly, double-chinned maid.
For the rest of the afternoon Lamb Nugent looks after Ada, while the corners of her jaw squirt painful juice for Charlie’s