The Ballroom Café by Ann O'Loughlin Page A

because of the different and extravagant pieces of jewellery she thought were flaunted. Mary McDonagh never raised her suspicions with Ella. If she had, she would have been told the truth: that Ella O’Callaghan, alone and under pressure, had found solace not in the arms of another man but in an old love affair – that of her father and mother.
    Instead, Mary McDonagh discussed her suspicions with all and sundry; and in the telling, convincing herself so absolutely as to the veracity of her claims that they came to be fact. She took it upon herself to write to her brother as to the sorry state of events: that his wife was unfaithful. Michael Hannigan, grieving the death of his baby daughter, buckled, and within two days was found, his head half blown off, as he slumped beside his metal bed in the Army barracks.
    It was not until his personal effects were dispatched to Roscarbury Hall that Ella saw the letter. When confronted, Mary McDonagh stood firm in the absolute certainty her brother was the aggrieved party in a sordid affair, which Ella O’Callaghan had concealed. If, in later years, she reconsidered her position, she never broached the subject with Ella, who had cut off all communications and banned the Hannigans from entering O’Callaghan property. Ella also reverted back to the O’Callaghan name.
    Scrabbling under the bed, Ella used her long umbrella to sweep in to the wall and push out the old Army tin box, rusted brown with age. Levering the side handles up, she wrenched hard to open it. A musty, dark smell of a long-dead man pushed past her. She moved his cigarettes and thick woollen Army-issue socks out of the way, along with the spare laces and the boot polish.
    A copy of the Evening Press newspaper, which had been folded neatly, was at the bottom along with a small stack of letters. Michael Hannigan always had been an obsessively tidy man. He would have read his newspaper and folded it along the creases before taking out his rifle and wedging it tight between the back of the wardrobe and the wall, so when he pressed the trigger it blew half his head off.
    A small group of letters contained all the notes Ella had sent him during his previous trips from home. On the top was Mary McDonagh’s letter, written in a careful and slow hand.

     
    Castle Street,
    Rathsorney,
    September 2, 1959.

     
    Dear Michael,
    It is with a heavy heart that I write to you to inform you of the goings-on in Rathsorney. I am sorry to tell you your wife Ella is having an affair, by all accounts with a rich man who can buy her expensive jewellery to adorn herself. I don’t write on a whim but after careful consideration, and I know how devastated you will be by this news.
    I know too that a woman who has lost her child in such tragic circumstances must not be right in the head and I have tried to take that into account. But, frankly, she is flaunting new jewellery every day, even at Mass.
    I can’t have word reaching the McDonaghs. This could badly affect my prospects. What would they think of us all? People are beginning to talk. It is time you came home and controlled your wife.

     
    I remain Your Loving Sister,

     
    Mary.

     
    That Mary, who had married soon after her treachery, should now want absolution for her sins, after living a happy and fulfilled life, made Ella O’Callaghan shake with anger. Afterwards came the wrenching tears, big wet drops of bitterness she had cried many times before. It lasted several minutes. With a familiar resignation, she went to the bathroom and sluiced her face with water before patting it dry. She redid her make-up, paying extra attention to her eyes. Before she returned to the café, she closed up the old Army box and pushed it hard into the far corner under the bed.
    She smiled at Chuck Winters as she entered the café, and his heart skipped; she looked so vulnerable, so gentle. Placing his crossword on the table, he hoped Ella would stop to chat.
    ‘Wonderful cake, Miss O’Callaghan,