by Edna O'Brien
“There’s something I want to say to you now, my lady, and I don’t want you to get up on your high horses either.” He took his teeth off the dresser and put them in. Felt better, more important, perhaps?
“You’re to behave yourself in Dublin. Live decent. Mind your faith, and write to your father. I don’t like the way you’ve turned out at all. Not one bit.”
‘Tis mutual, most mutual, I thought, but did not say so. I was afraid of getting struck, and all I wanted was to get quickly out of the smoky kitchen. Even my eyes were hurting, and the damn smoke made me cough.
“I’ll be careful,” I said. I looked around for the clock; it was ticking but I couldn’t see it. It was on the mantelpiece, face downward. I lifted it up and said I was very sorry but I had to go, as tea was at half past five.
“I’ll convey you over the road,” he said, and he put on his boots. It was all right once we got out in the air; there were lots of other people around and I was not so afraid.
Molly was waxing the hall when. I got in. The house was quiet.
“Where’s Martha?”
“In the chapel, I suppose,” said Molly.
“The chapel?” Martha always sneered at religion and praying and craw thumpers.
“Oh yes, she’s off every day now. Mass and everything,” Molly said.
“Since when?”
“Since the children’s First Communion. She went up to see the dresses and got a fit o’ crying in the chapel. Then she began to go to devotions after that, and in no time she was going to Mass.”
“That’s funny,” I said, remembering Martha’s remark once—that religion was dope for fools.
“Age changes people,” said Molly, shaking her head like an old woman.
“How does it?”
“Ah, it softens them. They’ll stick up for things when they’re young. But when they get on, they get soft.”
“Will you marry your boy, Molly?” I asked. She seemed a little strange. Not like herself. Wise instead of cheerful.
“I suppose so.”
“Do you love him?”
“I’ll tell you that when I’m married ten years.”
“Molly! How have you so much sense?” Molly could teach me things about life. I was ashamed of myself when I saw how sensible she was. She had a hard life and she never pitied herself, never felt sorry for herself like me.
“I had to have it. My mother died when I was nine and I had to rear two younger ones.”
“Wasn’t she killed?” I said. I had heard some terrible story about her being burned.
“Yeh. Burned to death,” she said.
“How?” I asked, though of course I shouldn’t have.
“It was near six, the potatoes weren’t boiled for dinner, and the men were nearly home. We heard the cart coming in at the bottom of the lane. ‘Oh, God,’ says she, ‘blow up the fire,’ and she threw paraffin on it and the fire flared up into her face and she was a mass o’ flames in two seconds. I threw a can o’ milk on her but ‘twas no use.” Molly told me this without crying, without breaking down, and I envied her for being so brave.
“We’ll make a cup o’ tea,” she said, getting up off her knees.
“If I drink any oftener this day, I’ll overflow,” I said, but we went down to the kitchen and made a pot of tea, and in a little while Martha came in. Afterward, when Mr. Brennan got home, Martha went upstairs with him to wash his hair. They were laughing and talking in the bathroom, and when I was passing I saw her rubbing the short black hairs briskly, between two halves of a towel. He was sitting on the bath and he had his arms around her bottom, with his head buried in her stomach. I was delighted to see them friendly.
Maybe they’ll be happy, I thought, and I hoped they would. Though in a way I was ashamed to see married people embrace each other. Because Mama and Dada never did.
When I went into the room I let a shout out of me. Baba was prostrate on the bed, with a mass of white mud all over her face.
“Oh!” I yelled, and Molly ran up to know what was wrong.
“Christ, you’re a bloody aul eejit,” Baba said. “I have my French mud pack on, preparing for Dublin. Did you never hear of it?” she asked. Her voice was stiff; because of the stuff around her lips, she couldn’t move them properly.
“No,” I said sullenly. I hated being such a fool.
“You’re a right-looking eejit,” she said, as she sat up and reached to the dressing table for a wet sponge and a bowl of water.
“Your mam and dad are great friends,” I whispered.
“Yeh. Before she knows where she is, she’ll have a damn child or something.”
“Would you mind?” I asked.
“Like hell. Bloody sure I’d mind. I’d be the laughingstock of the whole country. What would Norman Spalding say?” Norman Spalding was the bank manager’s son, and Baba was doing a line with him. Just for the few days before we left for Dublin. She said that the boys around home were little squirts anyhow, and no use. Sometimes during the holidays I made dates with some of them, but when I was out with them I was bored, and when they held my hand I felt disgusted. I always wanted to rush back to Mr. Gentleman, he was so much nicer than young boys.
All that week we prepared for Dublin.
On the last day I went up the village to say goodbye to a few people and to buy a packet of labels.
There was a pig fair around the market house. There were carts and red turf creels outside the shops and pink baby pigs in nests of straw, squeaking in the back of the creels. The pigs grunted and stuck their noses through the holes in the creels, trying to get out.
It was another wild, windy day, with dust blowing up the street and wisps of straw and torn paper. On the wind came the smell that prevails at every country fair. The pleasant smell of fresh dung, the warm smell of animals, and old clothes, and tobacco smoke.
The wind got inside the heavy topcoats of the farmers and flapped them out so that they looked like men in a storm; they looked fierce as they argued about prices and spat on their palms and argued more.
Two men came out of Jack Holland’s. The commotion and tobacco smoke came out with them, when they held the door open for a second, and more men smelled the noise and the porter and went in hurriedly. Mountainy children stood around minding donkeys and waiting for their fathers. Their clothes were too big for them, and they looked foolish. Their large eyes noticed everything, their gaze followed the women who came out of the houses and crossed over to fill a bucket of water from the green pump. The mountainy children looked at the untidy village women with surprise, and the village women looked back with that certain disdain which villagers have for poor mountainy people.
Billy Tuohey was weighing pigs on the big scales outside the little market house, and the pigs were screaming to get away. It was dark and there were black storm clouds racing across the sky. Everyone said it would rain.
I bought the labels and said goodbye to Jack. The shop was full and there was no time to call me aside and whisper things to me. Fortunately.
I was not sorry to be leaving the old village. It was dead and tired and old and crumbling and falling down. The shops needed paint and there seemed to be fewer geraniums in the upstairs windows than there had been when I was a child.
The next hour flew. Once again we were saying goodbye. Martha cried. I suppose she felt that we were always going, and that life stood still for her. Life had passed her by, cheated her. She was just forty.
We were in a third-class carriage that said NO SMOKING, and the train chugged along toward Dublin.
“Chrissake, where’s there a smoking carriage?” Baba asked. Her father had put us on the train, but we didn’t let on that we each had a package of cigarettes in our handbags.
“We’ll look for one,” I said, and we went down the corridor, giggling and giving strangers the “So what” look. I suppose it was then we began that phase of our lives as the giddy country girls brazening the big city. People looked at us and then looked away
again, as though they had just discovered that we were naked or something. But we didn’t care. We were young and, we thought, pretty.
Baba was small and thin, with her hair cut short like a boy’s, and little tempting curls falling onto her forehead. She was neat-looking, and any man could lift her up in his arms and carry her off. But I was tall and gawky, with a bewildered look, and a mass of bewildered auburn hair.
“We’ll have sherry or cider or some damn thing,” she said, turning around to face me. Her skin was dark, and when she smiled I thought of autumn things, like nuts and russet-colored apples.
“You’re lovely-looking,” I said.
“You’re gorgeous,” she said in return.
“You’re a picture,” I said.
“You’re like Rita Hayworth,” she said. “Do you know what I often think?”
“What?”
“How the poor bloody nuns managed the day you kept them out of the lavatory.”
At the mention of the convent, I got a faint smell of cabbage; that smell that lingered in every corner of the school.
“ ‘Twas tough on them, holding it,” she said, and she let out one of her mad, donkey laughs.
The train turned a sharp bend and we fell onto the nearest seat. Baba was laughing, so I smiled at a man opposite. He was half asleep and didn’t notice me. We got up and went down the aisle of the carriages, between the dusty velvet-covered seats. In a while we came to the bar.
“Two glasses of sherry,” Baba said, blowing smoke directly into the barman’s face.
“What kind?” he asked. He was friendly and didn’t mind the smoke.
“Any kind.” He filled two glasses and put them on the counter. After we had drunk the sherry I bought cider for us, and we were a little tipsy as we swayed on the high stools and looked out at the rain as it fell on the fields that shot past the train. But being tipsy we did not see very much and the rain did not touch us.
14
We got in to Dublin just before six. It was still bright, and we carried our bags across the platform, stopping for a minute to let others pass by. We had never seen so many people in our lives.
Baba hailed a taxi and told the driver our new address. It was written on the label of her suitcase. We had got lodgings through an advertisement in the paper and our future landlady was a foreigner.
“Jesus, Cait, this is life,” Baba said, relaxing in the back seat, as she took out a hand mirror to look at herself. She brought a lock of hair down onto her forehead, and it looked well there, falling over one eyebrow.
I remember nothing of the streets we drove through. They were all too strange. At six the bells rang out from some church, which were followed by other bells, with other chimes, ringing from churches all over the city. The peals of the bells mingled together and were in keeping with the fresh spring evening, and there was a special comfort in their toll. I liked them already.
We passed a cathedral, whose dark stone was still wet from the afternoon rain, though the streets were dry. We were dizzy trying to see the clothes in the shop windows.
“Christ, there’s a gorgeous frock in that window. Hey, sir,” she yelled, leaning forward in the seat.
The driver, without looking back, pushed a sliding window that separated the front of the car from the back.
“D’ju say something?” He had the singsong accent that is spoken in County Cork.
“Are you from Cork?” Baba said, sniggering. He pretended not to hear and closed the sliding window. Then, soon after, he turned to the left, drove down an avenue, and we were there. We got out and split the fare between us. We knew nothing about tipping. He left the cases on the footpath outside the gate. There was a motorbike against the railings, and inside, a narrow concrete path ran between two small squares of cut grass. Between the grass and the path was an oblong flower bed, at either side, and a few sallow snowdrops wilted in the damp clay. The house itself was red-brick, two-story, with a bay window downstairs.
Baba gave a cheeky knock on the chromium knocker and rang the bell at the same time.
“Oh, God, Baba, don’t be impatient like that.”
“None o’ your cowardy-custard nonsense,” she said, winking at me. The lock of hair was very rakish. There were milk bottles beside the foot scraper and I heard someone come up the hallway.
The door was opened and we were greeted by a woman in thick-lensed glasses, who wore a brown knitted dress and knitted, hairy, gray stockings.
“Ah, you are the welcome,” she said, and called upstairs, “Gustav, they’re here.”
There were white mackintoshes on the hall stand and a colored umbrella that reminded me of a postcard Miss Moriarty sent me from Rome. We took off our coats.
She was a low-sized woman, and was almost the width of the dining-room doorway. Her bottom was like the bottom of a woman in a funny postcard. It was a mountain in itself. We followed her into the dining room.
It was a small room crowded with walnut furniture. There was a piano in one corner, and next to it was a sideboard that had framed photographs on top of it, and opposite that was a china cabinet. It was stuffed with glasses, cups, mugs, and all sorts of souvenirs. Sitting at the table was a bald, middle-aged man eating a boiled egg. He held it in one hand and spooned the contents out with the other hand. He looked very funny holding the egg on his lap as if he wasn’t supposed to be eating it. He greeted us in some foreign accent and went on with his tea. He was not handsome. His eyes were too close together and he looked somehow treacherous.
We sat down. The circular table was covered with a green velvet cloth that was tasseled at the edges, and there was a vase of multicolored everlasting anemones in the middle of the table.
Something about the room, perhaps the velvet cloth or the cluttered china cabinet, or perhaps the period of the furniture, reminded me of my mother and of our house as it had once been.
Our landlady brought in two small plates of cooked ham, some buttered bread, and a small dish of jam.
“Gustav,” she called again, as she came in the dining room. I was a little afraid of her. Her voice was brutal and commandeering.
“Very good, my own make, homemade,” she said, putting a fancy spoon into the jam.
We ate quickly and ravenously, and when we had cleared the bread plate, we looked at one another and at the bald man opposite us. He had finished eating and was reading a foreign paper.
“Joanna,” he called, and she came in, drying her hands on her flowered apron. He said something in a foreign language to her. I supposed it was to ask for more bread.
“Mein Gott Almighty, save us! Country girls have big huge appetite,” she said, raising her hands in the air. They were fat hands and roughened from years of work. She had a marriage ring and an eternity ring. Poor Gustav.
She went out and the man continued reading.
Baba and I were certain that he didn’t understand English. So while we were waiting for the bread, Baba did a little mime act. Bowing to me, she begged in a trembling voice, “Oh, lady divine, will you pass me the wine?” I passed her the bottle of vinegar.
“Put on the tea cozy,” she said, and christened me “lady supreme.” Then, in another voice, she pleaded, “Oh, lady supreme, will you pass me the cream?” and I passed her the milk jug. Then she turned toward him, though he was hidden behind the paper, and said, “You bald-headed scutter, will you pass me the butter?” and while we were grinning, his hand came out from behind the newspaper and slowly he pushed the empty butter dish in her direction. We laughed more and saw that his hands were shaking. He was laughing, too. It was a nice beginning.
Joanna brought back two more slices of bread and some small pieces of cake. It was cake with two colors. Half yellow, half chocolate. Mama called it marble cake, but Joanna had some other name for it. The pieces were cunningly cut. Each piece only a mouthful. The man opposite took two pieces, and Baba kicked me under the table as if to warn me to eat quickly. She stuffed her own mouth full.
Gu
stav came in and we stood up to shake hands with him. He was a small, pale-faced man with cunning eyes and an apologetic smile. His hands were white and refined-looking.
“No, ladies, stay be sitting,” he said humbly, too humbly. I preferred Joanna. Baba was delighted that he called us ladies, and she gave him one of her loganberry smiles.
“Up there shaving all the night. What you got your new shirt on for?” Joanna said, looking carefully at his shirt and the top of his waistcoat. He said that he was going down to the local.
“Just for a small time, Joanna,” he said.
“Mein Gott! I have two chickens to pluck and you not help me.” The smile never left his face.
“Nice, nice ladies,” he said, pointing to us, and Baba was fluttering her eyelashes at a furious rate.
“Oh yes, yes; eat, eat up,” Joanna said suddenly, remembering us. But there was nothing else to eat, as we had cleared the table.
I began to tidy up the things, and pile the plates on top of one another, but Baba said in my ear, “Chrissake, we’ll be doing it day and night if we begin once. Skivvies, that’s what we’ll be.” So I took her advice and followed her upstairs to the bedroom, where Gustav had put our cases.
It was a small room that looked out on the street. There was dark brown linoleum on the floor and a beaded lampshade over the electric bulb that hung from the ceiling.
I went over to the open window to smell the city air and see what it looked like. There were children down below, playing hopscotch, and picky beds. One boy had a mouth organ and he put it to his lips and played whenever he felt like it. Seeing me, they all stared up, and one, the biggest one, asked, “What time is it?” I was smoking a cigarette and pretended not to hear him. “Eh, miss, what time is it? Thirty-two degrees is freezing point, what’s squeezing point?”
You could hear Baba laughing at the dressing table, and she told me for Chrissake to come in or we’d be thrown out. She said he was great gas, and we must get to know him.