Val Mulkerns’s debut novel, A Time Outworn, was originally published by Chatto and Windus in 1951. The novel received widespread acclaim, and Spring 2025 sees the publication of a special anniversary edition to celebrate the centenary of the author’s birth. This extract comes early on in the book, when Maeve attends a party in Rathfarnham.
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After a great deal of consideration Mrs. Kiernan had decided to make the party a dress affair. Evening-dress parties were rather unusual in Dublin, so perhaps that was why. She was a magnificent, tall, expansive woman, with a bosom unsteady as an overblown tea-rose, and misleadingly intelligent dark eyes, only a little less bright than her jewellery. She had a loud, bawdy laugh, and a mouth that was good-natured and naively sensual. Her generosity was incalculable. It was dangerous to admire anything in the house because she would think nothing of giving one a valuable ornament, or a cushion, or a pretty side-table, or anything one might admire from her overflowing jewel-box. She got violent and unmanageable if one refused. She demanded in return only complete submission, even from friends of her daughter, or casual acquaintances.
Her family—Nora and Mr. Kiernan—had long ago, I believed, surrendered their independence because their energy was less boundless than hers, and they would get tired of resisting long before she would tire of forcing. And so Nora was an earlier, prettier, more intelligent and less strong-willed edition of her mother, and Mr. Kiernan was an obediently cheerful little man of sixty, with anxious eyes and a great willingness to be of service to his wife, daughter, their friends, or any of the three farmhands. His wife chose his clothes, as she chose Nora’s, and the clothes of anyone else who would let her. On several occasions she told Doreen and me that the next frock we’d get should be red or yellow, and that young girls like us should go in more for tight bodices—we wouldn’t always be young and worth looking at, look at her. Doreen was considerably impressed, and always wore tight jumpers visiting the Kiernans. Cussedness made me wear my floppiest blouses, and I think she considered me a fool. Whenever Máire Lavin came in for any of this advice, her lovely, innocent face was something of a distraction to Mrs. Kiernan. Máire would keep the great eyes wonderingly on her all the time, like a child seeing its first giraffe at the zoo.
The house, ‘Springfield,’ was big and old and very ugly from the outside, like most houses in County Dublin. It had white steps up to the door and was long and rather narrow, with a square porch and the tall heads of poplars showing behind the house. The outhouses and stables were all to the right, from the road, which gave a slightly lopsided effect. But the long tree-lined drive up to the house was beautiful, and the little sham Gothic lodge was delightfully incongruous and gave a faintly exotic air to the place. Mountains rose up on all sides in the foreground and background, the low, wooded Dublin Hills very close, the blue-shadowed Wicklow Mountains lifting behind them.
The house had been built in the second half of the last century, when neither building-material nor space was of any consequence. Mr. Kiernan’s father, even with his fourteen children and four servants, could never have found use for all the rooms, but he had furnished all of them, and most of the furniture was still there, covered by dust sheets in big, unused rooms. There was an amusing story of Lucy, the first girl of that family who had wished to break away for the purpose of matrimony. After several years’ persuasion, old Kiernan had agreed to the marriage, but immediately after the ceremony he had informed the bridegroom that the house in Baggot Street did not meet with his approval, and that he would give the young man a year in which to fit it suitably. During that year Lucy would remain in Springfield with her people. Furthermore, it would be unsuitable for a child to be born among so many younger and innocent girls, and therefore to provide against such a possibility, the marriage could not be consummated until the end of the year. There were tears and storms, but old Kiernan was invincible and Lucy’s young man was apparently open to persuasion, and certainly not over-passionate. The outcome was that Lucy returned to Springfield and her husband to the unsuitable house in Baggot Street. They were to see each other at lunch in Springfield every Sunday. I’ve often wondered about those Sundays. There was a photograph of Lucy down in the enormous, flagged kitchen. She was a small girl, with pale hair knotted high on her head, wide timid bright eyes, and the most indomitable mouth I’ve ever seen. I fancy she did not waste a great many Sundays in futile tortures of desire, even if her husband was spineless. That wonderful mouth in the photograph suggested numerous illicit journeys to the orchard or up among the unused bedrooms. At least, I hoped so.
Mrs. Kiernan had decided that Doreen, Máire, and I would go out to the house in the early afternoon to help with the party preparations, and the prospect of bringing out our things and dressing together in Nora’s big bedroom appealed to all of us. And we gathered that there would not be a great deal of work to be done, even with only one maid. In this we were wrong.
The three of us arrived together to find Mrs. Kiernan enthusiastically directing operations, dressed apparently for the party, except for her short dress. Her jewellery was profuse and recklessly chosen, her hair freshly dyed and gathered into a riot of curls on top of her head. She was happy. Her eyes were brilliant with excitement as she rushed around from Nora to the maid, Maisie, and from Maisie to Mr. Kiernan. Each of these people was trying patiently to carry out the violently contradictory orders.
‘Now, Maisie, the hall’s to be polished first. You stick to cutting bread, Nora—and thinly, Nora—for the sandwiches, and John, you might see about getting in some lettuce. Nora, go out with your father and see he only takes the heads with good white hearts, and Maisie, you could wash your hands and slice tomatoes and see about breadcrumbs for the ham—maybe Mr. Kiernan would help you to grate them, or Nora.’
As soon as we appeared—through the kitchen door around the back—she rushed to welcome us and kissed us all tirelessly.
‘You’re lovely—you all look gorgeous, and it’s nothing to what you’ll look to-night. I’ll have to see your dresses first—don’t forget the lettuce, John, and run down to Mrs. Keogh and ask her to send the young one up to help—come up and show us them in my room. Come on up.’
And she marched us up the stairs and across the wide first landing to her room, a place made hideous by the conflict of unfriendly perfumes. She hustled the dresses out of our cases and held up the folds of them to the light, and when she’d finished looking at one she’d let it drop to the ground and rush at the next. We picked our dresses patiently off the floor and listened to her.
‘It’s gorgeous, Maeve darling, gorgeous. Did your mother make it?’
‘No,’ I said, nettled. ‘It was bought. It’s an advance birthday present.’
‘Lovely, lovely. And yours, Doreen, is a real little peach. A few splashes of perfume now where the neck ends’—Doreen’s neckline was one after Mrs. Kiernan’s own heart—‘and you’ll be all right for the night. It’s the sly little splash of perfume that does it—look, you can have some of mine, I’ve pints to spare. Take this now, Doreen darling, in case you forget. I don’t mind a bit—didn’t I tell you I’d pints, more than I’ll ever use?’ (Mrs. Kiernan did herself an injustice.) ‘And yours, Máire, is lovely too—like a First Communion dress, isn’t it? It’s lovely. She might do better in it than either of you,’ she ended, turning to Doreen and me with her guttural, ambiguous laugh.
Another girl might have been annoyed—although there was no malice in Mrs. Kiernan—but Máire laughed good-humouredly and said it would be a change, because she never ‘did well’ at parties, although she always enjoyed them. And I suddenly remembered that I’d said nothing to her about Brendan, although I had got him invited all right.
‘It’s about time we were getting down to give a hand,’ I said, and Mrs. Kiernan jumped as if she’d been stung.
‘Sure, I was nearly forgetting all about them downstairs, and declare to God they’re like babies when I’m not there to tell them what to do—if I don’t remember everything, it’s God help us,’ and she was off again, across the landing and down the stairs, like a falling trunk. We followed more leisurely, and coming down the stairs I took Máire’s arm.
‘Brendan’s coming to the party to-night, Máire, and I want you to be nice to him.’
‘Me?’ said Máire. ‘I’m sure he wouldn’t be bothered with me, when Doreen, and Nora, and all the others are here.’
‘But he would, Máire. I know he would, and don’t freeze him, will you?’
Her large innocent eyes caught all the light from a long window we were passing, and the reflected glow on her clear, ivory skin (common to people of her colouring) somehow gave the same effect as sunlight on the stone angel-faces in our church.
‘But I never freeze people, Maeve,’ she said, slightly worried. ‘Why should I? And Brendan’s a very nice boy. Of course I’ll be nice to him, if I get the chance, but he’ll be much too busy to notice me,’ and she smiled her beautiful untroubled smile, that brought the stone angels into my mind again.
‘You wait and see,’ I said, and my amused tone brought back the perplexed expression to her face, and her eyes were unhappy. I pulled her red, long hair.
Never mind me,’ I said. ‘Let’s go and get orders, though it might be better if we gave them. Isn’t she a terror?’
‘I know,’ said Máire, ‘but she’s the most generous woman I ever met, and she doesn’t mean half what she says.’
If it had been anyone else I would have replied immediately: ‘You mean she doesn’t say half what she means,’ but as it was I agreed, and we went down into the cool long kitchen where Lucy’s grave eyes watched the preparations from the wall.
Somehow, despite Mrs. Kiernan and because of the lodge-keeper’s wonderful daughter aged twelve, the preparations went on well, and by six o’clock everything was ready, and there were bowls of late roses everywhere, and in a large alcove in the hall (it used to be a fireplace) there was an oval vase of flame-tipped, yellow chrysanthemums.
And then Mrs. Kiernan delighted us all by producing her last-minute surprise, a collection of lovely Chinese lanterns which she sent one of the men to hang from trees near the house, and we suspended several in the hall porch, one at each corner. It looked like the setting for a harlequinade, and we wondered what the place would look like at dusk, when the lanterns would be lighted. There would be scores of them indoors too, because electricity had never been installed in Springfield. Mrs. Kiernan said it was vulgar. The light would be provided by candles, a few oil-lamps, and the lanterns. It was all highly dangerous, of course, but nobody thought of that, and I’d always loved the effect of the unfamiliar Springfield lighting. It seemed natural for an old house so near Sarah Curran’s ruined home.
At about eight o’clock (the guests were to arrive at nine) the four of us went up to dress. It was not really dark, there was just a thickening of the autumn air; and down in the city, a few lights shone and disappeared—people looking for things in dusky rooms, perhaps. But the light was too vague for the important business of dressing, and Nora struck a match and lit the branching candelabrum in the middle of her dressing-table. The three flames were pale as flowers in their conflict with daylight, but they threw a clear pool of light on the centre mirror, and slightly lit the two swinging side mirrors. The dresses had all been carefully laid on the bed, after Mrs. Kiernan’s excited ill-treatment of them, and I stood vaguely looking at them as they lay fresh and anonymous on the quilt. Parties, with their sense of unnaturally heightened life, usually depress me.
‘You’d better start kicking off your things soon, Maeve, or you’ll be last ready, and that’s unlucky,’ Doreen said.
She was laughing under the edge of her evening dress; it was just being slipped over her head. It was silver and had a slit from knee to hem, through which you saw the movement of a rounded, silky leg. The bodice was slit too, almost to the waist, and a diamond clasp held the edges together at the throat. It made her pale hair look almost silver, and smooth as water, and her eyes too were water, blue in sunlight. She glittered, and turned in front of the glass, smiling at her reflection in the candlelight.
‘Is it lucky to be first, Doreen?’ I said.
‘I don’t know. Anyhow, I don’t need luck,’ she said. It was things like this that made some people dislike her. ‘And anyhow, I’m not first. Look at Nora.’
Nora already had on her flame-coloured dress and was struggling to fasten the last button down the back.
‘I’ll do that for you, Nora,’ said Máire from the corner. As she ran across the carpet in her bare feet she looked, as Mrs. Kiernan had hinted, very like a First Communicant in her guileless white dress, with the red hair falling about her shoulders. When she turned to the candles to say something to Doreen, each eye held a flame.
There was some competition for the mirrors when it came to doing our hair, but finally we agreed that Nora should have the centre one (the room being hers) and Doreen and I should have a side mirror each. Máire said that the wardrobe mirror would do for all she was going to do with her hair. We worked silently for a few moments as the early dusk thickened outside. Nobody had thought of drawing the curtains. Suddenly Doreen swung around from the mirror and said:
‘I’ve never been so excited in my life about any party. It’s the evening dresses or something. I don’t know what. But I feel—’ and she dropped her comb and swung her arms above her head, and didn’t say what she felt.
But we knew. The shining dress and hair and eyes had infected us too with her strange excitement, and it was as if flames had suddenly been fanned within us. Nora spun on her heel and sent the scarlet wide skirt coiling in an arc, dangerously near the candles. Máire came over and caught her around the waist until she stopped, and dropped laughing on the bed. She pulled Máire with her.
‘Know what,’ said Doreen, glittering beside the mirror. ‘I’ve a marvellous idea. Let’s make a pact that we’ll all get men to make love to us to-night. That’s the way I’m feeling, and if you’d all only admit it—’
‘I never denied it,’ said Nora from the bed.
‘Nor I,’ I said.
‘Well,’ said Doreen, ‘that’s settled. Anyone who doesn’t get a man’ll have to treat the rest of us to a show. Is that fixed, Máire?’
‘Yes,’ said Máire unhappily, looking at her silver shoes. But I knew it wouldn’t be she who would have to treat us.
‘It won’t be me, anyhow,’ said Doreen. ‘I could handle St. Thomas this minute.’ The story had often been told us at school: St. Thomas Aquinas seizing a burning torch and chasing the naked sorceress out of his cell, and cutting the sign of the cross in flames on the closed door.
‘Even the certainty of scorching wouldn’t put me off,’ she added. ‘Who’s coming anyway, Nora?’
‘Oh, everyone. The Moore boys and Maeve’s brother and the Cronins and Garret Hurley—you probably don’t remember him—he’s been away in the war for ages. His people live around here. And then there’s the crowd we knew in school. I asked all of them, only Diarmuid’s away, of course. Is that enough to be going on with?’
‘Oh yes,’ Doreen said carelessly, ‘that will do. You know, Maeve, I like Brendan. He has a nice studious face and he tells you very funny stories all the time—so unexpected. I think him,’ she added thoughtfully, swinging one leg through the slit in her dress.
Máire looked up at me with quick amusement in her eyes, and I winked back.
‘You can try,’ I said, ‘but you never know with Brendan. He has peculiar taste,’ and when Doreen looked happily into the mirror I smiled across at Máire again. She smiled vaguely back, a rather clouded smile.
‘Never mind,’ said Doreen, shining at us, ‘when I want something—and in this dress too. I mean I don’t see how he can, do you, Nora?’
‘No,’ said Nora, ‘I don’t. Do you want a rose, Maeve? Mother left some over there for us.’
‘I’d love one,’ I said. ‘A red one, I think.’
She chose a fresh opening bud from the bowl and threw it across the room. Máire caught it neatly as it went over her head and came over to pin it in for me. She had neat, willing fingers. I looked up at her hair, glorious behind the candles. Doreen was looking out through the window.
‘A car,’ she said. ‘I can see the lights—do you think it’s Brendan, Maeve?’
‘If it was a bus, it might be Brendan,’ I said. ‘Do you think he’d bother coming in a taxi when he’s alone?’
‘Well, anyhow, I’m going down,’ said Doreen. ‘The time to get intimate with people is in the beginning of a party. Anybody coming?’ She looked lovingly at herself for the last time and ran a satisfied hand from throat to thigh.
‘Are we all ready?’ said Nora, her face, in excitement, very like her mother’s. We all were, but we lingered, like children who look at sweets a long time in their hands before biting them, reluctant to bring the last bite nearer. Nora lifted her hand like a blessing: ‘Good luck, ladies,’ she said, and she pushed us all out of the room and followed us downstairs. The hired band (saxophone, piano, and violin) was tentatively trying the first dance tune of the night, and it rose to a crescendo of vulgar grief as we reached the hall.The hall door was open, and out in the porch the Chinese lanterns swung dreamily, and threw a coloured twilight. It was almost dark. Somewhere, someone banged the door of a car, and we stood huddled at the coiled foot of the staircase, waiting for the first face at the door. Máire unaccountably slipped her hand through mine. And then, like an exploded firework, Mrs. Kiernan burst out of one of the far rooms, and the vague uncertainty we had all been feeling was dissolved.
‘You’re pictures, the whole lot of you, I declare to God. Pictures. Come out, John, till you see them, and leave that whisky alone—it’s not an execution you’re going to—will you look who’s here! How are you, Paddy and Sean and Oliver? You’re welcome,’ and she was off in a bounce to the door, an impressive vast figure in tight black satin, which foiled the massed jewellery.
The three boys came in, smiling and rather shy—the Moore boys. And then several girls with dresses caught up, ran up the steps, and we took charge of them, taking them to the large room full of mirrors which had been set aside as a dressing-room. Mr. Kiernan, smiling and anxious, his fingers still tingling for the whisky bottle, came out and took the boys away to remove their coats. From that on there were people arriving all the time, the large family of Cronins with their parents (the Cronin girls all giggled and all had prominent front teeth and the Cronin boys were mostly handsome), Garret Hurley and his sister, and several bald, joking men who had been youthful friends of Mrs. Kiernan, and at last I saw Brendan coming rather dazedly from under the Chinese lanterns, as if he had lost his way to the cloister. He looked well in evening dress, which showed up to advantage his rather startling black-and-white colouring. He had spent hours brushing his hair, I guessed, and it shone like coal. Mrs. Kiernan received him rapturously, shaking his hands and whispering impressively into his ear. As soon as she released him I rushed over.
‘Hello, Bren. Look, if you wait one minute I’ll get Máire and ask her to show you where to leave your things. And it’s up to you to hold on to her. I take no responsibility after this.’
‘Who asked you to?’ he grinned. ‘Thanks, Maeve. Oh God, Maeve, look at Doreen’s dress! ’
I found Máire in the cloakroom among the girls, helping people to fix their hooks, and comb their hair, and arranging flowers for them.
‘I want you in the hall, Máire,’ I said, taking her hand and detaching her from one of the Cronin girls, whose suspender she was adjusting. She came with me reluctantly, and I told her Brendan wanted to be shown around.
‘Oh Maeve! ’ she said unhappily, turning the great eyes imploringly on me. ‘You know how stupid I am with boys—I won’t know what to say,’ and she looked wildly around for escape. But I kept her hand firmly in mine, and we found Brendan where I had left him, blinking a little behind the dark-rimmed spectacles.
‘Here she is, Brendan,’ I said. ‘She’ll show you—I’m too busy.’ And suddenly Brendan’s glance was steady and shining and humble, and he said:
‘You don’t mind, Máire? If I may say so, you look very sweet in white’—and I thought: Oh, the fool! the fool!
But Máire, amazingly, didn’t seem to mind, and she smiled at him and innocently took his arm, steering him through the crowd and up the wide staircase to the first landing. They stood out among all the coloured crowd, he in black-and-white, she in white, like a bride and groom, I thought, as I watched them moving up the stairs. They came under a swinging lantern for a moment, and her hair blazed red-gold against the white dress. She was laughing, in profile, and so was Brendan.