231 42 “Now. The roast lamb. Which of ye has the lamb?” A waitress is standing at the top of their dinner table, two steaming dinner plates in her hand. “Oh, yeah,” says Father Bradley, pushing back his chair slightly. “That’s me. I’m the lamb!” “The lamb o’ God,” quips Tom Fitzgerald. Ruth shoots him a shushing look as the doctor chortles at his own joke. “And the cod?” asks the waitress again, holding forth the second plate. “Someone ordered codfish.” “Here,” Ellen says. “I had cod.” Behind this older waitress stands the younger Latvian girl who usually serves at breakfast time. The younger girl passes the remaining plates to the older, florid-faced waitress. Beef, roast chicken, poached salmon. And a large green salad for Riona Fitzgerald who has announced that, now that she’s back from her summer holidays in Portugal, she’s going to turn vegetarian for the rest of the year. The two waitresses lean past and over their heads again to place large platters of steamed broccoli, a bowl of carrots, huge bowls of French fries and boiled new potatoes at intervals down their table. It’s a Friday night and the Fitzgeralds and Father Bradley have taken Ellen to dinner at Flanagan’s hotel. It’s her good-bye dinner—last meal in Gowna. Upstairs in her small, second-floor hotel room, her suitcase sits unzipped and open on the bedroom floor, waiting for the last few items, waiting to be packed up for tomorrow’s flight to Boston. 232 * Áine Greaney There are four other occupied tables. Two tables have local-looking couples —faces that Ellen recognizes from her visit to the supermarket or from walking around the village. At one table sit three French tourists, their hair drenched, their rain slickers draped across the backs of their chairs. Earlier, just after the waitress brought their appetizers, Gerry Flanagan came bustling across the dining room followed by six American tourists who he seated around a large, round table near the door. They’re a group of men and women in V-neck sweaters and pressed jeans who made a great, theatrical fuss about who would sit where, and where they might hang their wet raincoats. Now, as Ellen half listens to more reports from the Fitzgerald family’s summer holiday in the Algarve, she watches the American women’s faces at the other table. A woman with highlighted hair and a lipstick smile is listening with feigned interest as her husband tells a loud story about an argument with the airport personnel in Shannon. They seem so foreign, their voices and demeanors so overblown for this country hotel. For this village of Gowna. It’s as if they’re playing their parts in some stage play where they assume there’s a listening audience. “But sure, that’s the thing, isn’t it?” Ruth Fitzgerald says, her voice vying with the American man’s hooting laugh. Ruth is sitting opposite Ellen. She’s leaning toward Ellen now, her pretty face tanned and smiling. “Hmmm?” Ellen starts from her thoughts. What thing? What part of the Portugal conversation has Ellen missed? Ruth nods to the rainy evening outside the dining room windows. “If you could even get a few decent weeks of weather here, you wouldn’t need to go abroad.” Ellen says, “You got a really great tan.” “Ach,” says Ruth, stretching out her bronzed forearm. “And that’s with a factor 25 on every day!” She dips her head toward her husband and children . “This shower went running around the place—every day a full timetable of snorkeling and swimming and the devil knows what. Not me. I got a chair at the pool and didn’t stir from there until I was called for meals. Getting rid of them for a week was my holiday!” Father Bradley sits next to Ellen. He’s wearing worn Levi’s jeans and a faded dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Earlier, when they all met [3.131.13.37] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 20:55 GMT) Dance Lessons * 233 in the hotel bar for pre-dinner drinks, there was something extra solemn about him. He says, “Ellen, I’m sure you’re off back to great sunshine out there in Boston. Saw on the news there that ye’re getting a real roaster of a summer.” “Supposed to hit 90 by the middle of the week,” Ellen says. “At least...