Fatty O'Leary's Dinner Party by Alexander Mccall Smith

Author:Alexander Mccall Smith [Smith, Alexander Mccall]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-101-87301-4
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2014-08-04T22:00:00+00:00

8

AFTER WATCHING HER HUSBAND BEING carried out of the room in the bath, uncertain as to whether she should accompany him (as a widow might accompany a cortège) but deciding not to do so, Betty returned to her bed. She felt profoundly discouraged by the morning’s events and wondered whether the idea of coming to Ireland had been a mistake. Her visions of quiet days spent enjoying the delights of the Irish countryside and the Irish table seemed to have been a hopelessly romantic misconception. The reality of Ireland was proving quite different; gravity, so cruel and unforgiving at home in Arkansas, seemed every bit as unremitting here, where it had subjected her husband to tribulations as onerous as any that had beset him on the other, correct side of the Atlantic. What was the point, she wondered, of travelling such distances only to find that the world revealed an identically unkind face? Perhaps it would have been better to remain in America, where at least the odds seemed less stacked against generously built people.

She decided that when Fatty returned she would ask him whether he wanted to persist with the holiday. It would involve no loss of face, she would tell him, to change their reservations and fly home that very evening. Nobody at home need know that they had returned prematurely, as they could quietly slip off for a few days somewhere and nobody would be any the wiser.

By the time that the freshly released Fatty returned to the bedroom, Betty had dozed off, her head full of reassuring thoughts of home. She opened her eyes with a start to find Fatty, clad in his towel, searching the room for his clothes.

“I’m back,” he declared simply.

She rose from her bed and embraced him.

“It must have been so uncomfortable,” said Betty, pushing a stray lock of hair off Fatty’s brow. “I’ve been thinking that perhaps we should go home … Ireland seems to be so …” She searched for the expression. What precisely was wrong with Ireland? The food? Well, she was in no position to pass judgement on that, as they had not had the opportunity to sample any Irish dishes yet. Since they had arrived at Shannon, they had, in fact, had no more than a little soup and a few pieces of bread at dinner. She had certainly seen some food that morning, when she had observed Rupert O’Brien eating kedgeree with such obvious enjoyment, but that alone gave her no grounds to pronounce on the national cuisine.

Was it general discomfort then? Again, this was a charge for which she had no evidence: Mountpenny House seemed comfortable enough, even if the bathroom now lacked a bath. (They could hardly complain about that.) No. The main objection to Ireland was its Irishness, or rather its wrong sort of Irishness. Everybody at home knew what it was to be Irish, and behaved accordingly, with St. Patrick’s Day parades and sentimental dinners. But did the Irish themselves know how to be Irish? She was less confident of that.

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