by Colm Toibin
Eilis loved closing the door of her old room and drawing the curtains. All she wanted to do was sleep, even though she had slept well in the hotel in Rosslare Harbour the night before. She had sent Tony a postcard from Cobh saying that she had arrived safely, and had written him a letter from Rosslare describing the journey. She was glad she did not have to write now from her bedroom, which seemed empty of life, which almost frightened her in how little it meant to her. She had put no thought into what it would be like to come home because she had expected that it would be easy; she had longed so much for the familiarity of these rooms that she had presumed she would be happy and relieved to step back into them, but, instead, on this first morning, all she could do was count the days before she went back. This made her feel strange and guilty; she curled up in the bed and closed her eyes in the hope that she might sleep.
Her mother woke her saying it was almost teatime. She had slept, she guessed, for almost six hours and wanted nothing more than to go back to sleep. Her mother told her that there was hot water in case she wanted a bath. She opened her suitcases and began to hang clothes in the wardrobe and store other things in the chest of drawers. She found a summer dress that did not seem to be too wrinkled and a cardigan and clean underwear and a pair of flat shoes.
When she came back into the kitchen, having had her bath and put on the fresh clothes, her mother looked her up and down in vague disapproval. It struck Eilis that maybe the colours she was wearing were too bright, but she did not have any darker colours.
“Now the whole town has been asking for you,” her mother said. “God, even Nelly Kelly was asking for you. I saw her standing at the door of the shop and she let a big roar at me. And all your friends want you to call round, but I told them that it would be better to wait until you are settled.”
Eilis wondered if her mother had always had this way of speaking that seemed to welcome no reply, and suddenly realized that she had seldom been alone with her before, she had always had Rose to stand between her and her mother, Rose who would have plenty to say to both of them, questions to ask, comments to make and opinions to offer. It must be hard for her mother too, she thought, and it would be best to wait a few days and see if her mother might become interested in her life in America, enough for her slowly to introduce the subject of Tony, enough for her to tell her mother that she was going to marry him when she went back.
They sat at the dining-room table going through all the letters of condolence and mass cards they had received in the weeks after Rose died. Eilis’s mother had had a memorial card printed with a photograph of Rose at her most glamorous and happy, giving her name and her age and the date of her death, with short prayers below and on the other side of the card. These had to be sent out. But also, to those who had written letters or those who had visited the house, special notes or longer letters had to be included. Eilis’s mother had divided the memorial cards into three piles: one that needed just a name and address on the envelope and a card enclosed, the second requiring a note or a letter from her, and the last needing Eilis to write a note or a letter. Eilis remembered vaguely that this had happened too after her father died, but Rose, she recalled, had taken care of everything and she had not been actively involved.
Her mother knew some of the letters of condolence she had received almost by heart and had also a list of everyone who had called to the house, which she went through slowly for Eilis, remarking on some who had come too often or stayed too long, or others who had gossiped too much or given offence by something they had said. And there were cousins of her mother from out beyond Bree who had brought neighbours of theirs, rough people from out the country, to the house, and she hoped never to lay eyes on either the cousins or their neighbours again.
Then, she said, Dora Devereux from Cush Gap and her sister Statia had come one night and they had never stopped talking, the two of them, with news about people no one else in the room had ever heard of. They had left a mass card each, her mother said, and she would write them a short note thanking them for their visit but trying not to encourage them to call again in a hurry. But Nora Webster had come, she said, with Michael who had taught the boys in school, and they were the nicest people in the whole town. She wouldn’t mind, she said, if they came again, but as they had young children she didn’t think they would.
As her mother read out lists of other people, Eilis was almost inclined to giggle at names she had not heard of, or thought of, during her time in America. When her mother mentioned an old woman who lived down near the Folly, Eilis could not resist speaking. “God, is she still going?”
Her mother looked sorrowful and put on her glasses again as she began to search for a letter she had mislaid from the captain of the golf club saying what a treasured lady-member Rose had been and how much she would be missed. When she found it, she looked at Eilis severely.
Every letter or note Eilis wrote had to be inspected by her mother, who often wanted it done again or a paragraph added at the end. And in her own letters, as in Eilis’s, she wanted it emphasized that, since Eilis was home, she had plenty of company and needed no more visitors.
Eilis marvelled at the different ways each person had expressed condolences once they had gone beyond the first one or two sentences. Her mother tried too, in how she replied, to vary the tone and the content, to write something suitable in response to each person. But it was slow and by the end of the first day Eilis had still not gone out into the street or had any time alone. And less than half the work was done.
The following day she worked hard, saying to her mother a number of times that if they continued talking or going over each letter received they would never complete the task in front of them. Yet not only did her mother work slowly, insisting that she and not Eilis would have to write most of the letters, but wanting Eilis to look at each one she completed, but also she could not resist making regular comments on those who had written, including people Eilis had never met.
Eilis tried to change the subject a few times, wondering to her mother if they might go to Dublin together some day, or even go to Wexford on the train some afternoon. But her mother said that they would wait and see, the thing was to get these letters written and sent and then they would go through Rose’s room and sort out her clothes.
As they had their tea on the second day, Eilis told her mother that if she did not contact some of her friends soon, they would be insulted. Now that she had begun, she was determined to win a free day, not to have to go straight from writing letters and addressing envelopes under her mother’s sharp and increasingly cranky supervision to sorting out Rose’s clothes.
“I arranged for the wreath to be delivered tomorrow,” her mother said, “so that’s our day for the graveyard.”
“Yes, well, I’ll see Annette and Nancy tomorrow evening, then,” Eilis said.
“You know, they called around asking when you were coming back. I put them off, but if you want to see them, then you should invite them here.”
“Maybe I’ll do that now,” Eilis said. “If I leave a note for Nancy, then she can get in touch with Annette. Is Nancy still going out with George? She said they were getting engaged.”
“I’ll let her give you all the news,” her mother said, and smiled.
“George would be a great catch,” Eilis said. “And he’s good-looking as well.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” her mother said. “They could make a slave out of her in that shop. And that old Mrs. Sheridan is very noble. I wouldn’t have any time for her at all.”
Walking out into the street brought Eilis instant relief, and, as it was a beautiful warm evening, she could happily have walked for miles. She noticed a woman studying her dress and her stockings and her shoes and then her tanned skin, and she realized with amusement as she moved towards Nancy’s house that she must look glamorous in these streets. She touched her finger where the wedding ring had been and promised herself that she would write to Tony that evening when her mother had gone to bed
and work out a way of posting her letter in the morning without her mother knowing. Or maybe, she thought, it would be a good way of letting her mother gently into the secret, in case she had not seen the letters that Eilis had written to Rose, that there was someone special for her in America.
The next day, as they walked out to the graveyard with the wreath, anyone they met whom they knew stopped to talk. They complimented Eilis on how well she looked but did not do so too effusively or in too frivolous a tone because they could see that she was on her way with her mother to her sister’s grave.
It was only as they walked up through the main avenue of the graveyard towards the family plot that Eilis understood fully the extent to which she had been dreading this. She felt sorry for how much she had been irritated by her mother over the previous days and now walked slowly, linking her arm while carrying the wreath. A few people in the graveyard stood and watched as they approached the grave.
There was another wreath almost withered that her mother removed, and then she stood back beside Eilis, facing the headstone.
“So, Rose,” her mother said quietly, “here’s Eilis, she’s home now and we’ve brought fresh flowers out to you.”
Eilis did not know if her mother expected her to say something too, but, since she was crying now, she was not sure she could make herself clear. She held her mother’s hand.
“I’m praying for you, Rose, and thinking about you,” Eilis whispered, “and I hope you’re praying for me.”
“She’s praying for all of us,” her mother said. “Rose is up in heaven praying for all of us.”
As they stood there silently at the grave, Eilis found the idea that Rose was below the earth surrounded by darkness almost impossible to bear. She tried to think about her sister when she was alive, the light in her eyes, her voice, her way of putting a cardigan over her shoulders if she felt a draught, her way of handling their mother, making her interested in even the smallest detail of Rose’s and Eilis’s lives, as though she too had the same friends, the same interests, the same experiences. Eilis concentrated on Rose’s spirit and tried to keep her mind from dwelling on what was happening to Rose’s body just beneath them in the damp clay.
They walked home by Summerhill and then past the Fair Green to the Back Road because her mother said that she did not want to meet anybody else that day, but it occurred to Eilis that she did not want anyone to see Eilis who might invite her out or cause her to leave her mother’s side at any point.
That evening, when Nancy and Annette called Eilis noticed Nancy’s engagement ring immediately. Nancy explained that she had been engaged to George for two months now, but she hadn’t wanted to write to Eilis about it because of Rose.
“But it’s great you’ll be here for the wedding. Your mother is delighted.”
“When is the wedding?”
“On Saturday, the twenty-seventh of June.”
“But I’ll be gone back,” Eilis said.
“Your mother said you’ll still be here. She wrote and accepted the invitation on behalf of the two of you.”
Her mother came into the room with a tray and cups and saucers and a teapot and some cakes.
“There you are now,” she said. “It’s lovely to see you both, a bit of life in the house again. Poor Eilis was fed up with her old mother. And we’re looking forward to the wedding, Nancy. We’ll have to get the best of style for it. That’s what Rose would want.”
She left the room before any of them could speak. Nancy looked at Eilis and shrugged. “You’ll have to come now.”
Eilis worked out in her head that the wedding was four days after the planned date of her departure; she also remembered that the travel agent in Brooklyn had said she could change the date as long as she notified the shipping company in advance. She decided there and then that she would stay an extra week and hoped that no one in Bartocci’s would object too strongly. It would be easy to explain to Tony that her mother had misunderstood her date of departure, even though Eilis did not believe that her mother had misunderstood anything.
“Or maybe you have someone waiting impatiently for you in New York?” Annette suggested.
“Such as Mrs. Kehoe, my landlady,” Eilis replied.
She knew that she could not trust herself to begin to confide in either of her friends, especially when they were together like this, without letting them know too much. And if she told them, she would soon find that one of their mothers would mention to her mother that Eilis had a boyfriend in New York. It was best, she thought, to say nothing, to talk instead about clothes and her studies and tell them about the other lodgers and Mrs. Kehoe.
They, in turn, told her the news from the town—who was going out with whom, or who was planning to get engaged, adding that the freshest news was that Nancy’s sister, who had been going out with Jim Farrell on and off since Christmas, had finally broken it off with him and had a new boyfriend who was from Ferns.
“She only got off with Jim Farrell as a dare,” Nancy said. “He was being as rude to her as he was to you that night, do you remember how rude he was? And we all bet money that she wouldn’t get off with him. And then she did. But she couldn’t bear him in the end, she said he was a terrible pain in the neck, even though George says he’s really a nice fellow if you get to know him, and George was in school with him.”
“George is very charitable,” Annette said.
Jim Farrell, Nancy said, was coming to the wedding as a friend of George, but her sister was demanding that her new boyfriend from Ferns also be invited. In all this talk of boyfriends and plans for the wedding, Eilis realized that if she were to tell Nancy or Annette about her own secret wedding, attended by no one except her and Tony, they would respond with silence and bewilderment. It would seem too strange.
For the next few days as she moved around the town, and on Sunday, when she went to eleven o’clock mass with her mother, people commented on Eilis’s beautiful clothes, her sophisticated hairstyle and her suntan. She tried to make plans to see Annette or Nancy either together or separately every day, telling her mother in advance what she intended to do. On the following Wednesday, when she told her mother that, if it was fine, she was going the next day in the early afternoon to Curracloe with George Sheridan and Nancy and Annette, her mother demanded that she cancel her outing that evening and begin the task of going through Rose’s belongings, deciding what to keep and what to give away.
They took out the clothes hanging in the wardrobe and put them on the bed. Eilis wanted to make clear that she did not need any of her sister’s clothes and that it would be best to give away everything to a charity. But her mother was already setting aside Rose’s winter coat, so recently acquired, and a number of frocks that she said could easily be altered to fit Eilis.
“I won’t have much room in my suitcase,” Eilis said, “and the coat is lovely but the colour is too dark for me.”
Her mother, still busy sorting the clothes, pretended that she had not heard her.
“What we’ll do is we’ll take the frocks and the coat to the dressmaker’s in the morning and they’ll look different when they are the proper size, when they match your new American figure.”
Eilis, in turn, began to ignore her mother as she opened the bottom drawer of the chest and poured its contents on to the floor. She wanted to make sure that she found her letters to Rose, if they were here, before her mother did. There were old medals and brochures, even hairnets and hairpins, which had not been used for years, and folded handkerchiefs and some photographs that Eilis put aside, as well as a large number of score cards for golf. But there was no sign in this drawer, or in any of the others, of the letters.
“Most of this is rubbish, Mammy,” she said. “It’ll be best just to keep the photographs and throw the rest away.”
“Oh, I’ll need to look at all that, but come over here now and help me fold these scarves.”
Eilis refused to go to the dressmaker’s the following morning, telling her mother fi
nally and emphatically that she did not want to wear any of Rose’s frocks or coats, no matter how elegant they were or how much they cost.
“Do you want me to dump them, then?”
“There are a lot of people would love them.”
“But they are not good enough for you?”
“I have my own clothes.”
“Well, I’ll leave them in the wardrobe in case you change your mind. You could give them away and then find someone you didn’t know at mass on Sunday wearing them. That’d be nice now.”
In the post office Eilis had bought enough stamps and special envelopes for letters to America. She wrote to Tony explaining that she was staying a few weeks extra and to the shipping company at the office in Cobh cancelling the return passage she had booked and asking them to let her know how to arrange a later date for her return. She thought that she would wait until closer to the date to alert Miss Fortini and Mrs. Kehoe to her late arrival. She wondered if it would be wise to use illness as an excuse. She told Tony about the visit to Rose’s grave and about Nancy’s engagement, assuring him that she kept his ring close to her so that she could think about him when she was alone.
At lunchtime she put a towel and her bathing costume and a pair of sandals into a bag and walked to Nancy’s house, where George Sheridan was going to collect them. It had been a beautiful morning, the air sweet and still, and it was hot, almost stifling in the house as they waited for George to arrive. When they heard the sound of the horn beeping in the station wagon he used to make deliveries they went outside. Eilis was surprised to see Jim Farrell as he held the door open for her and then got in beside her, allowing Nancy to sit beside George in the front passenger seat.