Nights at the Alexandra by William Trevor Read Free Book Online

resentment in Annie would fester then, her face becoming even heavier in her resistance to all that was being foisted on her. “Ah, sure, she’s settled in well to the accounts,” I had heard him telling a man on the street one day. “Sure, what more could she want?”
    “When they have the picture house built,” one of my brothers asked, “will they charge much to go in there?”
    My mother told him not to speak with his mouth full of bread because no one could hear him properly. My father, to whom the same objection might have been put, said:
    “I’d say they would. I’d say your man would need a big return on his money. What would he charge, Annie, to make sense of the thing?”
    My sister said she had no idea. Briefly, she closed her eyes, endeavouring to dispose of my father and the ability she had ages ago been invested with as regards swift calculation. My father did not pursue the matter. Completing the consumption of another sausage, he turned to me.
    “Did you ever find out are they Jews?”
    “She’s a Protestant. They were married in a Catholic cathedral.”
    “I’d say you had it wrong.”
    At that time of my life, harshly judging my father’s opinions and statements, his dress, his clumsiness, his paucity of style, his manner of lighting a cigarette, I found it perhaps more difficult than I might have to forgive him for dismissing the answers I offered to his questions. In retrospect, of course, forgiveness is easier.
    “That man’s not rough enough to be a Catholic,” my mother put in.
    The squatter of my two grandmothers asked us what we were talking about. In a raised voice my father replied that the man out at Cloverhill was going to build a new picture house for the town. “I’ve nothing against ajew-man,” he said. “He has a head for business.”
    “Isn’t Colonel Hardwicke out at Cloverhill?” my grandmother asked. “Running after the maids there?”
    “Colonel Hardwicke’s dead,” my father shouted, and my other grandmother nodded disdainfully. “Dead as a doornail,” said my father.
    My mother cut more bread. She poured tea into my father’s cup. “There’s a picture they’re after making in America that’s four hours long,” he said. “Did you hear about that one, Annie?” 
    “Gone with the Wind. ”
    “What’s that, girl?”
    “The name of the film is Gone with the Wind." “It was young Gerrity was telling me when he came into the yard. I’d say it was called something else.”
    “ Gone with the Wind is the only picture that’s as long as that. It’s coming to the Savoy in Dublin. There’s people going up to see it.”
    “Cripes!” one of my brothers exclaimed with enthusiasm. “Wouldn’t it be great to be in the pictures for four hours!”
    Sharply, my mother told him not to say “Cripes” in the dining-room. She reminded him that she’d given a warning in this respect before. My brothers were getting rougher with every day that went by, she said, glaring at both of them.
    “Mr. Wauchope’ll knock it out of them.” My father confidently wagged his head, at the same time turning it in my direction. He winked at me. “What’s that big stick you were telling me about, that Mr. Wauchope has in a cupboard?”
    I looked at him dumbly, extreme denseness in my eyes. “What stick’s that?”
    “Hasn’t he a blackthorn for beating the living daylights out of any young fellow who’d misbehave himself?” He released a guffaw, winking at me a second time.
    “He has a rod for closing the windows with. You can’t reach the top part of the windows,” I explained to my brothers, “so old Wauchope has to hook the end of a rod into them.”
    “Is it Mr. Conron I’m thinking of in that case?” my father persevered, his hand held up to disguise further winking from my brothers. One of my grandmothers asked him what the matter was, but he didn’t answer her. “Is it Mr. Conron that lays into you with the blackthorn?”
    “Conron wouldn’t have