Free The Temporary Gentleman by Sebastian Barry Page B

side, my very dapper brother Tom, in his best suit, tailored by my father of course, and no tailor in Dublin could have made a better one, even if it was a few years out of date, strictly speaking, but, if he looked provincial, nevertheless it was provincial with a touch of pleasing swagger about it. Then there was my father, Old Tom, who had decided to retrieve a straw boater from some dark corner of his bedroom. And he had fashioned for himself a set of tails and black trousers, to some degree let down by an old grey coat, an item he never attempted as a tailor, and so was shop-bought. He sat very still on the pew, with his eyes closed, so that he looked like one of those old photographs of executed train robbers in America, put out somewhere as a warning to the frontier populace.
    Beside him sat my mother and something in the day had undone her intentions somewhat because it is probably true to say that her attire was not quite right. She wore her old cloth hat and her plain, black, severe little dress that, unlike Maria Sheridan’s, which was also severe, had not cost too much in the first place, because my mother didn’t care about such things.
    Mai herself, then, coming in on the arm of Nicholas Sheridan, Maria’s husband, in her wedding dress, a long brushmark of silk.
    Now I was beside Mai, staring forward at the priest. He spoke the question to me, and I answered him, ‘I do,’ he fixing me with his eyes, keeping my eyes on his with a fierce effort, as if for a crazy moment I were marrying him, and then he put the same question to Mai, and there was a silence, that begged to be filled with her voice, with her assenting, and yet there was nothing, I hardly dared look sideways at her, now I was getting a little angry, angry at this bloody silence, you wouldn’t treat a dog like that, a man in a wedding suit tailored by his own father, with a fine little buttonhole, my mother’s face now in the furthest reach of my sight whitened by fright, as perhaps my own was – ‘I do,’ she said.
    We signed the Register of Marriages in the porch of the church, a huddle of varied souls, my mother, elated, on the edge of dancing, you might think, my father smiling and innocently pleased, the boater knocked back on his head. He shook Mai’s hand with fervour after she signed her name beside my own in the old book, and she kissed him on the cheek, leaning down to him a little. Then she kissed my mother and her own many aunts and cousins. Then her brother shook my hand and I thanked him for his kind offices of the day. There was a moment of peace. All was right, everything in its place, a consummation so far of my life, the logical and just outcome of my love for Mai. It was Nicholas who had paid for the little reception in the Great Southern Hotel, and it was my mother had put together the stupendous cake. It was Tom who had bought the train tickets to Dublin and arranged the few nights in Barry’s Hotel. The priest, having finished his performance, had all the ease of the actor released from his work. The rainy light, shouldering into the porch from the great door, seemed the light of goodness and promise.
    Mai was gone so quickly that when I went out into the narrow street there was no sign of her. But down beside the old church was her veil, like a spider’s web cleaned out of God’s mansion, that gave all the signs of having been wrenched from her head and discarded. It was pelting with rain and I had no coat, but I thought if I made a dash along Buttermilk Walk I might catch her. As I rounded the corner into St Augustine Street, a little girl was standing there, looking at the palm of her hand, where I could see a gold band, Mai’s wedding ring. Fifty yards along was Mai, a white ghost in the sheeting rain, hurrying away towards the river.
    In the distance the rain was dropping in dozens of huge, grey curtains, frittered and torn, across the vista of small houses. Although it was early afternoon, there was a darkness