A letter from
america
Geraldine O’Neill
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names,characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons,living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Published 2015
by Poolbeg Press Ltd
123 Grange Hill, Baldoyle
Dublin 13, Ireland
E-mail: [email protected]
www.poolbeg.com
© Geraldine O’Neill 2015
Copyright for typesetting, layout, design, ebook
© Poolbeg Press Ltd
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-78199-947-9
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photography, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
www.poolbeg.com
About the Author
Geraldine O’Neill was born in Lanarkshire, Scotland. She has lived with her husband, Michael Brosnahan, in County Offaly in Ireland since 1991. She has two adult children, Christopher and Clare. 2015 has been a very special year as her first grandchild, Leo Thomas Feely, was born in February.
A Letter From America is her eleventh book.
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to Paula Campbell, and all the staff at Poolbeg – especially my editor Gaye Shortland – for their work on this book.
Thanks also to my agents at Watson Little in London.
I want to express my gratitude to my friend, Bridget McDonnell for her experience, patience and help with the fictitious characters and the school convent scenes.
I would also like to acknowledge the members of the Post-Polio Support Group in Ireland – especially those who shared their early life experiences with me so I could portray my character with authenticity. Although my own experience with polio was relatively slight, I am aware that some of my fellow survivors have experienced much greater difficulties. I would particularly like to thank my lovely PPSG friend, Bernie O’Sullivan, who has been such a reliable support in recent years.
My gratitude to my parents, family and friends in Ireland and the UK, and all the people who support my writing in so many ways.
A special thanks to my lovely son, Christopher Brosnahan, who now gives me the benefit of his own professional experience in writing and in the world of media.
Also to my daughter Clare, and son-in-law, Mark Feely, for making our dream of being grandparents reality with the arrival of Leo!
As always, my loving thanks to Mike for his care and encouragement at all times.
A Letter From America
is dedicated
in loving memory
of my dear friend,
Margaret Lafferty
In our letters we are recollecting
And conversing with the soul,
Through both our friends
And ourselves.
~ Thomas Moore ~
Chapter 1
Tullamore, County Offaly
October 1968
Fiona Tracey stood beside the walnut kidney-shaped dressing-table situated in the bedroom window, her eyes following the postman on the other side of Crow Street. He leant his bike up against the wall of Dr Lafferty’s house and then pushed a bundle of brown and white envelopes through the polished brass letterbox. He came back to his bike and postbag and continued onwards along the street, stopping at a solicitor’s office and then the bookshop, pausing to push more post in doors and speak to anyone who came in his path. She watched, knowing that he would go on another forty yards or so, and then he would cross over and come down their side of the street.
She wasn’t expecting anything in the post for herself, as she had already received her weekly letter from her friend Elizabeth McCormack in New York so there would be nothing more until next week. Elizabeth had promised, when she’d left Tullamore the previous year to take up a position in the kitchen of a big apartment in Park Avenue, that she would write every week. She had kept her promise. Sometimes it was a big long rambling letter telling Fiona about the latest dance she had been to, or the latest frock she had bought, and other times it was just a postcard.
On Monday an unusual red postcard had arrived with a picture of the Brooklyn Bridge and the Empire State Building, and a caption which said, New York, The Wonder City. On the back were a quick few lines – Been very busy, as we’re getting ready to go to the family’s big holiday house in The Hamptons for a week. Will write a long letter with all the news from there next week. God bless, Elizabeth x
Still in her dressing-gown, Fiona went out into the corridor to go the bathroom and clean her teeth. She caught the smell of the morning bacon cooking downstairs and could hear her mother and Mrs Mooney, the housekeeper, talking in the kitchen, and then she heard her father coming in the back door. The rattling of iron told her he had carried in a basket of turf and was now raking the huge range in the kitchen. She would go downstairs in a few minutes when she knew the fire had livened up and the breakfast was ready to go on the table.
When she came back into her bedroom, she lifted the two pillows from the bed and laid them on the chair in front of the dressing-table, then she straightened the white sheets and the grey Foxford woollen blankets. She replaced the pillows and pulled the lace counterpane up over them. Then she went around the bed, smoothing the top cover with her hands, making sure there were no wrinkles or small bumps.
Mornings had settled back into the usual routine now her two younger sisters – Angela aged twenty-two and Bridget seventeen – had gone back to their respective places in Dublin and near Athlone. Outside the holiday periods there was only herself and her parents left in the family Georgian house on the edge of Tullamore town in the Irish Midlands. It was a busy household which centred on running Tracey’s bar and grocery shop just a few minutes’ walk away. The start of the day was marked by the arrival of their widowed housekeeper, Mary Ellen Mooney, around eight o’clock, and from then on Fiona and her parents – Seán and Nance – went between the shop and the bar and the house as they were needed.
Fiona was not unhappy about this. She got on well with her parents and their barman. At one point after leaving school she had considered options such as working in an office or bank, but decided that working for her father allowed her the flexibility that another employer would never have allowed. Living at home saved money and enabled her to run her grey Austin Mini, which gave her the independence to take off to places like Galway or Dublin with her friends.
But the main thing that kept her going with the predictable daily routine was that she knew it was not going to last forever. She had other plans for the future.
She moved over to sit at the dressing-table and brush her wavy brown hair. Then she heard the clang of the wrought-iron gate. Footsteps echoed from downstairs going across the hall floor, and she knew by the lively tapping of the heels that it was her mother. The steps came back to the bottom of the stairs.
“An airmail letter for you, Fiona!” her mother called.
“I’m coming!” she replied, already moving towards the bedroom door.
She went down the stairs quic
kly.
Her mother handed the letter over with a smile. “I knew that would get you moving.”
Fiona was more than surprised to see that the handwriting was Elizabeth’s. The New York postmark was dated only two days after the one on the postcard.
“I don’t know how Elizabeth has so much time on her hands,” her mother remarked, “to write all these long letters to you. Does she write to many others in the town?”
Fiona shrugged, still examining the envelope, and putting off the actual opening of it until she was on her own. “I suppose she writes home to her family regularly.”
“There are sausages and rashers cooked and in the oven, if you’re planning to have breakfast in your dressing-gown?”
“Great,” Fiona said. “I’m ready for it now. I’ll get dressed after eating as I want to have a quick bath.”
This was a small bone of contention with her mother who always arrived downstairs washed and dressed in the mornings. Nance Tracey was ready for the shop in her maroon twinset and black skirt, with a long string of polished black beads. In her fifties, small and slim, she always looked well for her age. Her brunette hair was set twice-weekly by the local hairdresser into a fashionable shoulder-length flicked-out style and then lacquered in place. Her pink-painted oval nails were maintained by always wearing rubber gloves for rough work at home and in the bar and shop.
As they were growing up, Nance had tried to ingrain in her three daughters just how much their appearance counted but, to her disappointment, only Angela had taken her advice seriously so far. Fiona was rather a hit and a miss, making the effort chiefly for the weekends and going out. The rest of the time she preferred to have her long wavy brown hair tied back for work, and wore the minimum of face cream and make-up.
“Well, don’t take too long over things,” her mother said, heading back down the hallway to the kitchen. “We have all the sweets and bars still in boxes and the hardware delivery should be arriving around ten o’clock. We need to get it all priced.”
Fiona stood in the hallway for a few moments, pondering what might be inside the letter, and then she carefully opened it. She quickly started to read down.
Park Avenue
New York
12th October
Dear Fiona,
You won’t believe it! Mrs Davis has just told me that you can have the nanny’s job! She also said you can live in one of the staff rooms here beside me. It’s exactly what I was praying for, and I can’t believe it’s actually happened!
The nanny is leaving after Christmas as she is expecting a baby, and Mrs Davis says she is going to write an official letter to you this week with all the information, so I thought I would write today to let you know, and get the letter away in the post this afternoon. It means you will have the news that bit sooner so you can start making arrangements.
I know it’s nearly three months away but, believe me, the time flies when you have to sort out passports and all the official things. It will be far easier for you as you will have a job and an address to come to, as it’s the first thing the immigration people ask you about.
I know you said you would be happy to work in a shop or an office and get a room in a boarding-house, but living in the apartment here in Park Avenue with the family is the best situation you will ever get. It’s a dream come true! I know how lucky I am from talking to other Irish girls I meet up with at the cathedral and at the dances. Some of them are in awful places with landladies who are very strict, and not nice to them.
As I’ve told you before, Mrs Davis is a lovely woman, and she has a great fondness for Irish girls. The children – Tommy, who is nearly one, and Page, who is three – are good and you will find them easy to look after.
I’m so delighted you will be coming to live beside me in New York. I keep smiling to myself every time I think of it, since Mrs Davis told me the news. It will be great to have a friend from home who knows everyone I know, and will know what I’m talking about. I love living in America, and I love my American boyfriend, but there are still times when I get homesick for Ireland. Having you here will change everything for the better. I won’t say any more about the apartment, because you will see it with your own eyes soon. I will just say that you will love it.
Write back as soon as you can and let me know what you think of the news!
Love,
Elizabeth xx
Chapter 2
January 1969
Fiona stood on a chair and stretched up to the bar ceiling to reach the piece of Sellotape which held one end of a Christmas decoration, featuring a string of rainbow-coloured, honeycomb bells, made from tissue paper. She had just let the cardboard end fall concertina-like to the floor when the pub door opened and Patrick Trimm came in, followed by his father’s plodding old Labrador, Sandy.
Patrick was the dependable barman, who had worked in the bar since he was a teenager with Seán Tracey. Heading towards forty now and still a bachelor, the stocky, auburn-haired Patrick lived in one of the bigger rooms above the pub, while the other three were rented out on a bed-and-breakfast basis to tourists and people visiting relatives in the town. Patrick’s elderly parents lived in a cottage on the Arden Road in Tullamore, and he usually went out to stay with them on his day off.
“You should have waited for me to come in and I’d have got that,” Patrick said now, coming over to Fiona. Sandy went slowly in the opposite direction, across the stone floor to lie down in his usual place in front of the fire. “I can reach the decorations more easily and not have you stretching for them.”
“I’m grand,” Fiona said, climbing down. “I don’t mind doing it – we’re quiet in the shop and my mother is there for the next hour before she and my father head up to Dublin. I think they’re leaving just after lunch as he has a hospital check-up. He’s up at the house now getting changed.”
Patrick looked at her. “It’s not anything serious – the hospital? I thought he was going up for a meeting with the brewers.”
Fiona shook her head. “No, he said it’s nothing really, just a check-up.” She indicated the decorations. “Mam’s been going on, saying that the tree and the decorations in the shop, the house and the bar have all to be down for tomorrow.”
“Today’s the seventh of January,” Patrick said, “so I suppose it’s time to get them down. My mother took hers down last night.”
“There’s no time limit on them as long as they don’t come down before Little Christmas,” Fiona said, “and that was only yesterday, but you know what my mother’s like.” She gestured to the dangling decoration. “I thought I’d make a start in here before we get busy later. There’s a big card game on tonight, isn’t there?”
“There is,” Patrick said. “There’s a crowd coming over from Portarlington for it.”
He took the chair from her and stood up on it to carefully peel off the Sellotape holding the other end of the decoration. It fluttered down onto the floor. Fiona bent and gathered all the coloured tissue shapes together, neatly folding them back into one thick bell.
She went over and put it on the bar counter. “If you get the decorations down from the ceiling, I’ll dismantle the Christmas tree – if you can call it that.” She lifted the box for the glass baubles and took it over to the imitation tree which stood forlornly by the newly lit fireplace.
“What’s it like?” she said, shaking her head and laughing. “I told Daddy we needed a new tree and new lights and baubles, but he said we’d get another year out of them. He said the same last year – and no doubt will say the same next year. The same old decrepit tree and the same old decrepit ornaments hanging on it. Thank God I won’t be here to see it again.”
She started lifting the baubles off one by one and placing them in the box.
Patrick brought a chain of paper lanterns over to the counter. “How long is it now until you go?”
“Eleven days – Saturday the eighteenth.”
“Are you all packed yet?” he asked.
�
��More or less,” she said.
“It’s a big step, mind you, New York.” He observed her closely. “No second thoughts?”
Fiona shook her head and smiled. “None. I’m really excited about going. Obviously I’ll miss everybody – you and Mrs Mooney included.”
Patrick’s face reddened. “Ah, you’ll be grand – you’ll be too busy to miss anyone.”
“Well, I’ll have Elizabeth out there so at least I won’t be too homesick. And I’ll be writing home regularly, keeping in touch with everyone.” She lifted a green ball sprinkled in hard, silvery snow and put it in the box.
“I’d say they’ll still miss you. Sure, they probably miss Bridget and Angela when they go back after a break at home.”
Everyone who came into the shop was telling Fiona how much her parents would miss her, but she really did not want to hear it. She didn’t want to picture her parents sad about her going.
“They’re busy with here and the shop. When I’m all settled in a year or two they might even come out to visit me. It will give them something to look forward to.”
“I suppose that’s a good way of looking at things,” he said. “And travelling is a great thing.”
“You go over to England every year, don’t you?”
“I do,” he said. “I usually go to over to Manchester for a fortnight to see my brothers and I always enjoy it. And then they come home in the summer themselves to see my mother and father.”
“And do you think any of them might come back home to live?”
He shook his head. “Ah, I’d doubt that now. They’re all married over there to Englishwomen and have kids and everything.”
It was just on the tip of her tongue to ask whether he had ever thought of getting married himself, when one of the coloured glass baubles slipped out of her grasp and tumbled down through the sparse branches of the tree. A second later it smashed on the stone floor, sending fragments of glass all over the place.
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