Long Island by Colm Tóibín

Author:Colm Tóibín [Tóibín, Colm]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan Australia
Published: 2024-03-27T02:01:20+00:00

Part Four

‘YES, YOU DO. ALL we asked was for you to behave like a human being on one day. One single day! So don’t bother saying that you don’t have a hangover. You do!’

Laura was on the first landing shouting at Gerard.

Nancy remained in the kitchen. Soon she would go upstairs and check herself in the full-length mirror on the inside of the wardrobe door in her room. Both Miriam and Laura had said that they liked her outfit.

When Gerard told Laura that he would be ready in five minutes, Laura withdrew into the living room, joining Miriam who had been ready for the past hour.

Nancy was glad that she had insisted on Laura driving to the cathedral, even though it was close enough for them to walk. She did not want people stopping her on the way. Once she got to the cathedral she would try to keep out of the limelight. All the attention would be on Miriam in her full-length white dress, her simple veil and plain white high-heeled shoes.

Gerard would walk his sister up the aisle.

As she waited in the doorway for the car driven by Laura to appear, Nancy remembered how she had walked up the aisle of the same cathedral on her own father’s arm. She had almost felt sorry for George’s mother who had spoken too freely in the town of her feeling that George might have done better. This had been passed on to Nancy’s own mother by some of her neighbours. Nancy had been tempted to have it out with Mrs Sheridan in the days before the wedding but then she decided to forget about it.

She remembered Eilis Lacey arriving at the cathedral that day with her mother and Jim Farrell and how everyone was sure that theirs would be the next big wedding. But more than Eilis or Jim, it was Mrs Lacey she recalled, the look of undisguised satisfaction on her face. Her memory of the wedding party itself was a jumble of faces and voices, people trying to be heard over the music and George catching her eyes as often as he could and smiling at her. No one knew that she and George would be spending the first night of their honeymoon in the Strand Hotel in Rosslare. It was customary, then as now, to keep such details secret. But she had recently told Miriam who had arranged for her own first night to be spent in the same hotel. And Miriam had told no one except her mother. Even Laura did not know.

‘I blame Jim Farrell,’ Laura said as she drove up Main Street.

‘For what?’ Nancy asked.

‘That’s where Gerard was until two in the morning. Drinking after hours, if you don’t mind.’

‘Was Jim serving him?’

‘Jim went to bed and left that Andy fellow with the keys.’

As she and Laura walked through the cathedral gates, Nancy was stopped by the groom’s brother to inform her that his mother had also arrived.

Since the Waddings lived closer to New

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