In all of the following I am going to assume that the story has been read which might at the most take up an hour or so of your time. As ever it is crisply written and to this reader contains enough material between the lines to subvert a specious reading. Life enters fiction when the story gets away on Keegan.
Is it possible to construct a case for Cathal? Yes it is. Has he been hard done by? Indeed he has. Does he deserve it? We are being induced to think that he does in some sense. He is after all presented as a beta male whose department boss is ten years younger who wears designer suits (to work?) and keeps in trim by playing squash. Cathal owns one pair of shoes and a few, likely generic, trainers. The wedding suit will remain in the crypt of dreams peeping reproachfully from the wardrobe. Laugh down your snots ladies and cry ‘ecrasez l’infame’. In my edition there is an afterword in which reference is made to a version of this story in French published by Sabine Weapiesir called ‘Misogynie’. Might it not also have been entitled ‘Androgynie’? Sabine is also the name of the bolter at the altar.
Taking it from the beginning. Cathal has turned up for work on the Friday of his the cancelled wedding week end. Turning down bursary applicants must go on. An invidious note. While getting coffee he meets Cynthia from the finance department. The little interchange between them when you look back from the vantage point of the end of the story has a deeper significance than is apparent.
It was almost ready when Cynthia, the brightly dressed woman from accounts, came in, laughing on her mobile. She paused when she saw him, and soon hung up.
‘All right there, Cathal?’
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Grand. You?’
‘Grand.’ She smiled. ‘Thanks for asking.’
He took up the coffee, leaving before he’d sugared it, before she could say anything more.
The alpha male boss is kind:
The boss was a Northern man, a good ten years younger than himself, who wore designer suits and played squash at the weekends.
‘Well, Cathal. How are things?’
‘Good, thanks.’
‘Did you get a bite of lunch, something to eat?’
‘Yeah,’ Cathal said. ‘No bother.’
The boss was looking him over, taking in the usual jacket, shirt, tie and trousers, his unpolished shoes.
‘You know there’s no need to stay on,’ the boss said. ‘Why don’t you call it a day?’ He flushed a little then, seeming uneasy over the well-intentioned phrase.
‘I’m just finishing the budget outline now,’ Cathal said. ‘I’d like to get this much done.’
‘Fair enough,’ the boss said. ‘Whatever. Take her handy.’
When you think of the humiliation that Cathal has just suffered his turning up for for work is brave. Theme song: I’m in the saddle again. His handling of Cynthia is correct and we can retrospectively allow the appellation that she maintains all men of the calibre of Cathal apply to all women. Yes, Cynthia is a cunt. That ‘thanks for asking’ has the true passive aggressive whine. Cathal is going to move on, unpolished shoes notwithstanding.
The gravamen of the charge against Cathal is that he is mean. However recall that he owns a house or his death owns a house, in Arklow. Paying for that out of a lowly clerkish salary requires fasting and abstinence. That’s a habit. He doesn’t own a car and is prepared to spend time waiting for the bus to get home. Sabine his girl friend lives in a flat which she shares with three students. That’s not expensive. Spending the week end with Cathal at his house and cooking there with viands she buys is certainly a better deal than hanging out with younger women. There’s an intimation that Sabine may be little cross eyed and beamy. She intends to slim down to get into her wedding dress. Noticeably she does not cook for Cathal when she turns to salad and low cal food. That cooking which was not very haute was really for herself and a defence against the accusation of mooching.
Then she moves in, with her impedimenta that tend to shoulder aside the frugal traps of Cathal. As everyman knows, when a woman gets to tidying you can never find anything. Seriously the institution of marriage gives the security that make these reactions trifling. These things build living together.. Then there’s the matter of the antique diamond ring that requires adjustment. The initial cost must have been painful and the resizing a twinge or two. The keeping of accounts is corrosive. The usual French women in literature is a picture of a shopper who is firm with rascally grocers and keeps a budget with logic and precision.
Sabine has tea at the Shelborne with Cynthia which is not of the Uncle Giles sort (cf Anthony Powell) fish paste sandwiches and a slice of seedcake. The dirt is dished and baby that’s all she wrote. Dear Cathal, its not me, its you. Well I respectfully demur and in the interstices of the story so does Keegan.
Will our hero move on? He already is doing so by turning up for work, bold micturation and other forms of ‘defi’. Having once made a serious move in life it can happen again. Marry an Arklow woman with a good knee to a pot. What were you thinking?
