Miss Emily

by Nuala O'Connor

  Daniel drops his head, and neither of us speaks. Placing the milk jug near his hand, I find I want to pet the knuckles and the sprouting of light hairs on them. I would like to run my fingers across the little hillocks and feel their bony strength. I linger for a moment.

  “Crohan comes here sometimes to do bits and bobs for Mr. Dickinson. He’s a bit of a quare hawk, right enough. There’s something off with him. He’s pushy, maybe.”

  “He’s as mad as a brush if you ask me.” Daniel grins up at me and passes his arm around my waist. “How have you been keeping, Ada?”

  I slip away from him, in terror that Miss Emily or, worse, Mrs. Dickinson will come in. Sitting opposite Daniel, I fold my hands around my teacup, then remember myself and take it by the handle with my fingers.

  “I’m grand,” I say. “I think I upset Miss Emily, though, and I haven’t seen hide nor hair of her since. Not alone anyway. She’d normally be under my feet in the kitchen most of the day.”

  “What happened?”

  “It was nothing, really. I interrupted a private scene. A conversation. I don’t know. She barked at me.” I twiddle the edge of my apron, for I am still trying to fathom why she got so annoyed. “It’s not like her to be snappish.”

  “It’ll blow over, I’m sure. No one could be angry with you for long.” I look up, and Daniel holds my gaze; he offers me his hand across the table, and I reach over and let him hold mine. His skin is warm and rough, the skin of a hardworking man. “Will I get to see you at all?”

  “I have New Year’s Eve off. The family are going across to Mr. Austin’s house for the day.”

  “That’s marvelous. We’ll do something. The snow is melting—we could take a long walk together.”

  “I’d like that.” He lets go of my hand, swigs his tea and rises. “Don’t think bad of Miss Emily,” I say, feeling guilty for complaining about her. “She’s not altogether well this weather.”

  Daniel settles his cap over his hair, salutes with one hand and is gone out the door as quick as he came in. I clear the table and run my finger across the place where his mouth met the rim of the cup. I put my lips to that same place and drink back the lukewarm dregs of his tea.

  It is mild for late December, and the sun hangs low and orange in the sky. Daniel said he would come for me, and I stand outside the Homestead, sweeping my eyes up and down Main Street to try to catch sight of him as he approaches. That way I can settle myself before he sees my face. He makes me giddy. Even thinking about him sends my chest into a spasm. I taste the day’s weather on my tongue and feel glad it is not too cold.

  There are old leaves on the pathway, and I am wondering if I would have time to get the broom at them when a buckboard pulls up and stops at the bottom of the steps. The horse paws the ground, and I glance at the driver, thinking he has stopped at the wrong place. I look again when I realize it is Daniel himself. He hops down, dragging the cap from his head.

  “I’m sorry it’s not a buggy with a hood and all, but it was the best I could do.”

  “Well, it’s lovely,” I say, going toward the trim carriage and wondering if it is safe.

  “I’m glad you like it. I know a wainwright in Holyoke, and he gets me to try out his new gigs and carriages, to make sure they’re sound.” Daniel slaps the horse. “And this is Betty, the sweetest mare in all of New England.”

  Daniel rubs her flank, then lifts me by the waist into the seat and gets up beside me. He pulls a blanket over both our legs, clicks at the horse, and we trot on. The mare has hard, sleek withers and a reckless tail; I hope that she will behave.

  “Where are we off to?”

  “I thought I might take you out to Mount Norwottuck.”

  “Do you mean to climb it?”

  Daniel laughs. “Not at all. It’s a couple of miles to the top. We’ll just go and look. See what we can see.” The buckboard springs under us, and the horse trots gaily along. “You’d think she’d been waiting for this all her life—to take two jackeens out to the sticks to gawk at a hill.”

  I laugh and slip my arm through his elbow crook. The wind in my face is sharp, and I don’t even mind that my cheeks will be as ripe as plums by the time we get to the mountain.

  Daniel croons to the horse on the jaunt out, cajoling and mollycoddling her. “Great girl,” he says. “Hup, Betty, hup. That’s it, hup now. You’re a smasher, Betty.”

  He goes off into another place when he is at that—talking to horses; I hear him with the Squire’s horses. It is as if nothing exists but him and the animal. I don’t mind; I am happy as a brooding hen sitting next to him, feeling the heat of his long body against mine. And I like to see the countryside unfolding before us, as if it were put there for our pleasure. I ask him if he has ever driven the Dickinsons’ cabriolet, and he says he has. I tell him I would love a go in it, to enjoy its creamy insides and peep from its oval windows.

  “Maybe someday we’ll have a carriage like that,” Daniel says, and I am made quiet by this remark.

  Mount Norwottuck is a sloped triangle rising out of the valley in a stand of small mountains. Daniel stops the buckboard, and we sit and look across at it.

  “It’s lower than Slievenamon,” I say, “but beautiful all the same.”

  A lid of cloud hovers over the mountain range. The hills themselves are navy, and white with snow, too, richly dark and bright against the sky and cloud. I think it would be nice to be at the top, breathing the thin air and lording it over the valley. Whenever I climbed Slievenamon with Mammy or Granny Dunn, I felt like a queen looking down over Killusty, Loughcopple and Kiltinan Castle perched on the banks of the Clashawley, and far off to Fethard, closed inside its high walls.

  Daniel twists his body toward me. “What do you miss about home, Ada? About Ireland?”

  “Apart from my family? I suppose I miss Dublin itself, its dirty din. I miss Tipperary, too. My granny’s place, the peace there.”

  “I miss the Liffey, the stink of it.”

  “Me, too. I used to swim in it.”

  “Did you, now?” He scratches his head. “I miss the sea. It makes me itchy or something, not being near the sea.”

  “I miss the way people are, too,” I say. “You know, people from Dublin are freer than the people here—they don’t fuss as much. Dubliners are open. They talk more.”

  “They laugh more, too, if you ask me. Some of the ones here are wound very tight.”

  “But they are good people, too. They live well. We can all learn from that.”

  “You cannot take on their ways, Ada. It is impossible to become them.”

  “I know. That’s not what I meant.”

  “They are themselves and we are ourselves, there’s no getting around it.”

  I listen to Betty’s slow munch-crunch on grass and watch her toss her mane. I think about Miss Emily and what a conundrum she is. She can be wound tight, like Daniel says, but she is free, too, in many ways. Well, in any case her mind is free. I remember the word I heard her murmur to Miss Susan—“forevermore”—and wonder what she meant by it. Betty whinnies, breaking into my thoughts. I turn to Daniel.

  “I didn’t know my own restlessness until I got here. I seemed to calm down inside myself once I was settled.”

  “I know what you mean, though it still feels strange to me. Everything. The air.”

  “After seven years? Surely not?”

  “It does, even after all this time.”

  “You’d like to go home, then?”

  “Maybe. Sometime. If I could.”

  I look around at the snow-patched grass and the mountains, at the clouds scuttling across the sky. It is lonely here, I think. It feels lonely to not know a place well, to be away from the beauty of your own area. It is green here, green in a way that I do not welcome, because it makes me heartsick for Tigoora and for Mammy’s home in Tipperary, Granny Dunn�
��s tiny house above Killusty.

  “What is it like, the part of Dublin you’re from?” Daniel asks.

  “Tigoora? What do you mean, what is it like?”

  “Is it a town?”

  “No, it’s country, but near enough the city. Not like my mammy’s first home, in Tipperary, where my aunt and uncle are from, too. They all lived under Slievenamon.”

  “Slievenamon. It’s such a lovely name. Tell me what it means, Ada.”

  “It means ‘women’s mountain.’ It’s very peaceful there. Very safe.” I shiver a little and pull my coat snugly around me.

  “You’re cold,” Daniel says.

  “The way it is, we’re in America now,” I say, more to myself than to him. “We have to make the best of it.”

  “And we have each other.”

  “We do,” I say.

  Daniel jumps from the buckboard and helps me down. “Let’s walk.”

  We link arms and stroll a pathway under trees. The grass there is just letting go of frost. The blades stand like white spears, and I toe them with my boot to better see the pearls of frost that still cling to them. Huge trees form a canopy over the path ahead of us, and I wonder if we should turn back, in case we trespass onto someone’s land.

  “I took the pledge, you know, Ada. Father Mathew’s pledge,” Daniel says, stopping suddenly and looking down at me. “I tasted wine once and didn’t like it. So that was that. I’m for total abstinence, like the good Father said.”

  “It’s a pity there aren’t more like you.”

  “It’s Adam’s ale for me. That alone.”

  “Adam’s ale?”

  “It’s what they call water sometimes.” He fidgets with his coat button. “I have a bit of money put by, you know, Ada. A nice lump of money.”

  “It is always wise to save, Daniel. Yes. ‘Sow frugality, reap liberty.’ Isn’t that what they say?” I look up into the bare branches of the trees and wonder at their size. “Everything is bigger here,” I murmur.

  Daniel stops walking and turns me to him by the shoulders. “Do you know what I’m telling you, Ada?”

  “I think so,” I say, my neck and chin starting to scald. I look up at him, at his face so serious.

  “Grand,” he says, and drapes one arm around me so that we can walk on. He seems lighter in himself having spoken, though my heart jigs in my chest.

  “It’s after getting bitter,” I say, hawing on my cold hands.

  “It is. We’ll go back.”

  We daunder toward Betty. Daniel lifts me up into the buckboard and gets up himself. When he settles the blanket across us, he leans over and puts his mouth to mine. I feel his soft tongue pressing between my lips, and I open my mouth wider to let him in. We sit and kiss, and all sorts of feelings come over me. Between my legs swells, and I want to mold every part of myself into every part of Daniel. I put my fingers to his face to feel the working of his jaw and to hold his mouth even closer to my own. His tongue is so soft, so fragrant, that I would happily have him swallow me whole. Every move of his mouth only makes me want to kiss him more. He licks my teeth, sliding his tongue over my gums, and I nearly rise out of my seat with the sweetness of it. I forget about the cold, about what he has suggested to me, about Miss Emily and work and the whole lot. I kiss Daniel and he kisses me, and all there is in the world is our two mouths, our two tongues, our closed eyes, our hands holding the other’s cheeks. We break away, both panting a little. We smile and turn our faces, then look again. Daniel takes up Betty’s reins, clicks his tongue, and says, “Walk on.”

  I am late getting up; the Lord only knows why. Too much air, maybe. Mammy used to call me her rooster, the way I woke at the same time each morning and could get everyone else up. The fires have to be set still, and so I run down the stairs with my boots in my hand, thinking I will light the stove first and put on my boots once it’s blazing. I fling open the door to find Patrick Crohan standing in the kitchen, having a look around by the dim light from the open back door. He is studying everything as if he owns the place.

  “What are you doing in here?” I say. “Is Daniel Byrne not with you?” Without thinking I fling my boots onto the table, and then we both stand gawping at them.

  “Oh, Miss High-and-Mighty. Shoes on the table—you’ll get no luck from that.”

  Crohan shakes his head and blesses himself, and I want to thump him. I snatch the boots—they seem to pulse with badness all of a sudden—and sit to lace them up. I look at him.

  “I asked you what you were doing. This is a private house. You don’t waltz in the door when it pleases you.”

  “Byrne said to meet him here.”

  “He meant for you to meet him in the yard, by the barn. You know that. Out with you, now.”

  Crohan goes to the back door and turns. “How did a slither-arse like you get a start here?”

  “You pup. Get out of my kitchen.”

  “Your kitchen? Go on, you little witch.” He comes in close to me and looks into my face, then lets his eyes slide over my body. “You’re no great shakes,” he says. “But you wedged your foot in the door nicely here, didn’t you, Miss Concannon? Sitting pretty in that top bedroom. Do you sleep well?”

  “Go away, get out!” I push at his side, though I do not want to touch him.

  He cackles and shoots out, slamming the door behind him. I am full sure Mrs. Dickinson is going to arrive down to scold me over the noise. Crohan has left a peculiar, sweet smell behind him, and it makes my stomach flip over. I get to raking the fire and shove on my boots, the laces done any mad old way. And that is where Aughrim was lost. As I descend the stairs with the slops, the laces on both boots come undone, and I go arse over head, piss and shite all down my front and covering the steps. I sit among it, and I want to weep. The smell seeps into my nose, and I start to gag, but there’s no time for pity because there is applesauce to heat for the family’s hash. I haul myself up and clean the stairs. I lift the stinking stools with my bare hands and try not to throw up. Whipping off the soiled apron, I give my hands a good scrub, but of course they still feel dirty. I wash the stairs down again with scalding water and pine oil. Then I clean my hands once more, soaking them in the hottest water I can bear.

  I bring through the tray to the dining room and feel sorriest for Miss Emily, even though she is out with me. I am glad that she doesn’t know the carry-on that has left me with dubious hands, but it grieves me that my fingers might be foul while I serve her food. They’re clean, they’re clean, I say to myself, over and over, as I dish up the breakfast. Each of the family says thank you—Miss Emily with her eyes cast down, as is her habit with me now—and I scuttle back to the kitchen, mortified. I scrub my hands again.

  I charge out to the yard once I know that the family are settled with coffee and everything else they need. Daniel smiles his slow, lovely smile when he sees me.

  “Where’s that go-boy?” I ask.

  “Who?”

  “Patrick Crohan. He was in the kitchen when I came down this morning, standing in the near dark. And the lip out of him.”

  Crohan saunters out of the barn. “Do you want me, Miss Concannon?” he says.

  “Don’t you ‘Miss Concannon’ me. And never set foot in that house again, unless you’re asked. Do you hear me?”

  “He won’t, Ada,” Daniel says, gripping my elbow and rubbing gently at my other arm.

  “The cut of yiz,” Crohan says. “She’ll skedaddle on you, Byrne, before long. Find herself a proper man.” He pulls himself up taller.

  Daniel turns to him. “Enough,” he says, and Crohan slinks back into the barn.

  “Can you not get rid of him?” I say.

  “He’s not mine to get rid of. It’s his uncle who pays my wages.”

  “Ah, sure, I know that. I just can’t stand the sight of him. Keep him away from the kitchen or I’ll run him.
” Even as I say it, I know I will see less of Daniel now; he won’t come in for a sup of tea and leave Crohan on his own in the yard with the horses. It makes me want to spit. “His mother must have walked on a grave when he was inside her belly, he’s that odd.”

  I’m up to my oxters in croppins and lights, gizzards and giblets when Daniel raps on the door.

  “Will you not step in?” I say, wiping chicken guts from my fingers with a cloth.

  “I’d better keep an eye on Crohan. God knows what he’ll get up to if I leave him too long.”

  “He’s a fidget of a fella, all right.” I go to the stove and take two cans from it. “This one’s yours. There are extra spuds in it.”

  Daniel winks and backs out the door. He blows me a kiss with his lips, and I shake my cloth at him. I am smiling like a loony when I look up to see that Miss Emily has glided in without my knowing.

  “Ada.”

  “Miss.” I go over to her. “Do you need some more coffee inside? Does Mr. Dickinson want more hash?”

  “No, no. I came to see how you are.”

  “I’m grand, miss. And you? Has Father John cured you yet?”

  She smiles and puts her hand to her chest. “I do believe he has, Ada. I have also had my own father keeping watch, so there was little choice but to improve.” She goes to the cupboard and takes down her measuring cup and spoon. “Would I be terribly in the way if I made gingerbread this morning? I want to give some to the children.”

  “Not at all, Miss Emily. I’m boiling up a chicken broth on the stove top. You’re welcome to use the oven.”

  It pleases me that she is here. She is a little stiff, maybe, a small bit bashful with me, but I do believe we are friends again and there’s no harm done. Thanks be to God; I couldn’t rest easy if this unevenness between us went on for much longer.

  “If we could eat gingerbread morning, noon and night, Ada, what a deal of happiness there would be in the world.”

  “It’s true for you, miss. Do you want the rose water, or will you use it this time at all?” I fetch the bottle without waiting for her answer. “I’ve been keeping the best feathers for you for making the glaze.” I grab the neat brown tail feathers from the jar where I have kept them and hold them up for her to see.