Free Under the Rose by Julia O'Faolain

Miss Laceys sitting on high stools, laughing over gin fizzes with two men. He raised his eyebrows. ‘ Well! How did that happen?’ The men looked nice chaps, and the sisters were chattering nineteen to the dozen. Miss Kitty Lacey’s laugh ricocheted across the lounge. ‘Ca, ca, ca, ca!’ High and repetitious like the cry of an anxious crow. Maisie, as if to emphasize a lack of hope, was sitting on the edge and turned half away from the others.
    Mrs O’Keefe had overheard all. She lowered her voice. ‘They met them’, she muttered, ‘at the tennis tournament at Mount Merrion two years ago. Kitty and Jenny partnered them in the mixed semi-finals. One’s an architect. The other works in a bank. They’re staying in the hotel. English!’
    The captain’s mind raced in unison with hers: ‘Catholics?’ he whispered.
    Mrs O’Keefe drew back in annoyance. ‘ Captain! I’m surprised at you! After the present pope’s encouragement of mixed marriages! Anyway, they could turn.’ She leaned forward to his ear. ‘The drawback is’, she whispered, ‘that there’s only two !’ Again she withdrew herself, this time to give him one of her fixed-eyed, pursed-lipped, slow and ponderous nods.
    ‘Ah!’ agreed the captain.
    ‘We’, she prompted, ‘can invite one of them to make up a party after dinner. I’ll get Miss Taylor to play so we’ll only need one to make a fourth. Maisie ,’ she judged. ‘Then the men can invite the other two out on the tiles.’ She laughed with the innocent vulgarity to which the captain was becoming used in pious women.
    The plan worked. Maisie’s sisters took a boisterous, shamefaced leave of her and had not come back with their beaux by the time the bridge party went to bed. It had been a strained little session, for Mrs O’Keefe, frustrated by Maisie’s presence from discussing her sisters’ prospects, was too fidgety to concentrate on cards; Maisie played badly too so that by the end of the evening the pair, who were partners, had lost quite a bit.
    ‘Poor me,’ Maisie lamented as she paid up.
    ‘Ah well! Unlucky in cards you know!’ said Miss Taylor abstractedly and was kicked by Mrs O’Keefe.
    The captain’s sympathies, repelled by Maisie’s play, returned to her on the boomerang of pity. ‘Well, this has been an agreeable evening indeed!’ He drained his glass. ‘One of the pleasantest on the trip. But all good things and all that. Remember, tomorrow we have to rise early for our tour of the City of Light.’
    The ladies lumbered upstairs, slowed by drink and confidences. Walking behind them – he had paused to say something to the concierge – the captain saw Maisie’s box-shaped form tilt towards that of Mrs O’Keefe. ‘Oh super! A regular charmer!’ Mrs O’Keefe’s hiss floated down the stairs to him. ‘Isn’t it funny, now, he never got married!’ He went into his room and locked the door. He polished his shoes, inserted the wooden trees and carefully tied the laces over them. He had a shower, gave himself a friction with eau-de-Cologne and remembered that the golden rule was to keep things from getting personal. Be nice as pie but – off parade, off parade. A bit sticky sometimes. He climbed into bed to read a war memoir in which the human element was considered from a safe, abstracting distance.
    Next morning the blue-pennanted busload visited the Sacré Cœur, the Sainte Chapelle, Saint Sulpice and Notre Dame. The pilgrims, weary of churches, gabbled prayers, collected the available indulgences and settled back in their seatswith a profane zest when the captain proposed a drive into the country. He took them towards Rambouillet, along roads where mistletoe hung hairy smudges on the limbs of poplars, and sounds were spasms in the air. Returning, they decided to stretch their legs in the Bois de Boulogne and gaped at crisp-figured riders on distant bridle paths. The lake was diamond bright.
    ‘Golly!’ Jenny Lacey squeezed old Miss Taylor’s arm.