Venetia Kelly's Traveling Show

by Frank Delaney

  “Read it, Mother.”

  Mute as stone, she took it from my hand.

  “Is it a true and accurate record?”

  She nodded, afraid of me.

  “Then write the words. ‘A true and accurate record,’ sign it underneath, and put in today’s date,” and I called, “Lily!”

  The floor shook as Large Lily thundered in.

  How did I know to do it? How did I understand that it needed a witness to Mother’s signature? How did I make sense of it all? I have no idea. Sometimes my mind leaks like a colander, sometimes it fills with sand, a silt piling up, and I have to tilt forward to get a clear view of my own floor. But sometimes, like a silver javelin coming at me, I see the truth, I see the right thing to do. I wish I could see that javelin more often—thick, shiny, sharp-pointed, and rotating slowly in the air as it aims at me; I still look for it.

  “Mother. Listen to me.”

  “Yes, Ben. I’ll listen carefully.” She had lately taken to saying this. She said it, I felt, out of defeat, as though by listening to me she could persuade the world to revive her and stand her on her feet again. She looked at me with the sad eyes of an ill-used dog.

  “Understand this. Mr. Kelly has taken a mortgage over our property. It means that at the end of the month, if you haven’t paid him back all the two thousand he has loaned you, plus the interest he has declared, then he can evict you and move in here.”

  “But the interest rate is very, very decent.”

  “Nothing to do with it, Mother. How much of the money have you still got?”

  “Well, Ben, I had bills to pay. I had to pay Billy and Lily.”

  I sat back and so did she, and we both knew what had happened.

  “Can you do something about it, Ben?”

  There are some looks you never forget. Passion. Slyness. The sudden giveaway downward glance of somebody who’s manipulating you. Entreaty—that appeal that asks, “Can you do something, because I can’t?” Which was what I now saw in Mother, added to the chagrin, the “I’m so stupid” look, and in her case, the “My husband has left me” look.

  So that you know—that was the moment when “demure” no longer applied. Timidity vamoosed, to use my father’s word. I can call up that “entreaty” look of Mother’s any time. For the purposes of telling you this story, I’ve just gone to a mirror and called it up, and I saw it reflected in my own eyes. I hope I never have to recall it again.

  I’m fond of the word hero. James Clare and I talked about it often, and I made him laugh when I described how, as a little boy, I used to stride through our woods as I thought a hero might—long steps and emphatic footfalls. He loved it.

  “But that’s how they walked,” he said. “That’s how the gods strode the mountaintops. How do you think Finn MacCool went across the Giant’s Causeway from Ireland to Scotland? Think about seven-league boots.”

  I love the idea of seven-league boots—a league is three miles; therefore you travel twenty-one miles with each stride: perfect.

  That hero stride came back to me when I left the house, with Mother numb in the parlor. God, I had seven-league boots! I was about to descend on Mr. Kelly and Professor Fay and crush them with my giant boots. How dare they?!

  If you’d been there, you’d have seen my stride—a “here’s-my-head-my-legs-are-following” sort of aggression about me. It used to make Billy Moloney laugh.

  “There’ll be flockin’ trouble now,” he’d say.

  I headed like a beast for the cottage. This had to be sorted out. Not for a day longer could that mortgage be permitted to exist. I didn’t know what I was going to do; all I knew is that I intended to do something.

  In those woods, where, as I’ve told you, every tree is my friend, there’s a clearing. It’s far from the paths but I know it well, and I’ve always loved it. Mother took me there first, and told me that she used to lie on the grass in the pool of sunlight during the months before I was born.

  I often meant to ask her whether I’d been conceived there. It became my true childhood refuge, my place when I was confused or lonely, as I was without a sister, brother, or often even a nearby friend. Hazel trees rim this clearing, decent with branches; it’s like a big circle of peace.

  Buying time—I think I was trying to establish whether my timidity really was evaporating—I headed for the clearing, intending to go on from there to the cottage and see Mr. Kelly or Professor Fay or both. As I got nearer, I heard noises—metallic sounds and voices raised.

  In my clearing? What the hell!

  The ferns stood shoulder-high and no Mohican ever reconnoitered like I did. I got forward to the hazels without disturbing a frond. Through the greenery gleamed something incongruous—a strong color blue. And a gunmetal gray. And a man in a loud check suit with a big, unlit cigar. And a sweaty little man beside him, pompous as a gamecock.

  The blue came from the shirts worn by thirty, forty, maybe fifty men; the gray from the barrels of the guns they sported as they drilled up and down; the loud voice from a white-haired man older than my father. He also wore a blue shirt as he put the armed men through their paces as though he were drilling a secret army. Which he was.

  Very Important Digression: We had Fascism in Ireland. It wasn’t called that—but Fascism is what it was. Very suitable, in part, to the Irish temperament; if we want to settle an argument, observe how often we use our fists. Avoid doing it if you can; it’s a bad idea. Extend such a tendency upward into the national body politic and you can easily see that there are many ways in which we’d have been pals with Hitler. Communism would never have worked for us—we’re too envious. Climbing up by standing on the bodies of those you’ve killed—that’d work.

  Let me explain the root of the word Fascism to you, because you’ll already have come across it very often. I find that I understand more in life—and more clearly—if I go by the language.

  Here’s what I understand by Fascism, one of the filthiest words in the world.

  In some form, it originated within the Roman Empire, where, as a symbol of military power, legions carried an ornamental, tightly bound set of fasces, the rods of authority. These were bundles of short staves held together by leather bands, and when an order wasn’t obeyed, the officer carrying them brought them crashing down on the head of the offending soldier.

  Eventually they gained ceremonial status, and in the Roman Senate, when somebody wanted a debate to end, he reached for the ornamental rods and raised them—to signify that there would be no more discussion.

  Don’t trust me necessarily on this; place no bets. My authority, our English teacher, Mr. O’Toole, also told us that you determine the sex of chickens by holding a needle on a thread above the chicken’s private parts, and if the pendulous needle swings up and down in a straight line it’s a boy chicken, and if the pendulum describes a wide circle it’s a girl chicken.

  When Mr. de Valera won in 1932, a number of his opponents contemplated the Fascist route back to power. This is what happened: Six days before the election, a bunch of men (fascists always move in bunches) met in the Wynns Hotel on Abbey Street in Dublin. It became a notorious meeting, at which many of those attending, including several army officers, understood that they were participating in a “might is right” debate. And it wasn’t the first such meeting—it’s merely the most famous.

  By then guns were available. To cut a long story short, within a year the militia that they founded had begun to appear across the country. They didn’t wear brown shirts like Hitler’s bunch, or black shirts, like Oswald Mosley’s mobs in England—they wore blue; and they had the straight-arm salute. I don’t know if they ever worked out a Gaelic equivalent of Sieg Heil!—but I remember them in towns and villages, and they looked sinister.

  What I saw in my little clearing in the woods must have been one of their very first musterings. Years later, I heard that they’d come together very quickly, because their eventual leader, the man I’d met named O’Duffy, then the country’s chief
of police, had substantial organizational talents.

  That afternoon, as I peered through the ferns, they seemed very pleased with themselves. With them stood the man with the thick and sleek black hair who had had the gun in the cottage. End—for the moment—of Very Important Digression.

  I lingered and lurked, hidden in the ferns. The men had little skill, and only a few knew how to handle and present a rifle. They marched like rookies, but hard and determined; if zeal wins wars, we were lost. Hands slapped on the guns as they presented arms; bolts clanged in the sunshine. When the “Stand at ease” order went up, I ducked back through the ferns and got to the cottage before anybody returned.

  Through the window, Mary Lewis saw me arrive and came to the door. Her smile of welcome had too much of the gloat in it for comfort.

  “How’s Mammy?”

  I hated that parental term—syrupy, gooey, and too common; children all over Ireland used it, and I knew married men who addressed their wives as “Mammy.” To this day, it makes me inclined to retch.

  “Is Mr. Kelly here?”

  “That’s a very nice coat.” Mary Lewis stepped too close and fingered my sleeve. “I s’pose ’tis as well you got it while your daddy could still afford it.”

  “When will Mr. Kelly be back?”

  “Did you know he has me permanent?” She looked at me like a slug—but I felt like a bird. “And great wages. How much is Lily getting from your mammy?”

  I looked hard at her and she retreated.

  “You should see the French wines they have here. And a ton of cheese.”

  I turned to go and she said, “He’s not far away—d’you want to wait?”

  We called it “the cottage” but many people raised families in smaller houses. Mary Lewis had a fire burning, and I could see why the Fays liked the place so much; cozy and quiet, full of what Mother called her “warmth colors”—browns and soft greens and mustard cushions.

  Mary Lewis disappeared into the kitchen at the rear, and I stood in front of the fire trying to make myself feel proprietorial. I had no anchor. Up to then, when faced with anything, I asked myself what my father would do. But that sense of authority in me had been undermined—by him. No anchor—and no rudder. Difficult to be proprietorial.

  Now, at the moment when I needed the authority and its strength, I couldn’t muster it, but I managed to produce the next best thing—silence, or something close to it. Not entirely by will, though—when King Kelly arrived, my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth.

  All his affability had fallen away.

  “What can I do for you?”

  Oh, those glittering eyes.

  “The mortgage,” I said.

  “You left us early on Sunday, eh?”

  My brain was rocking like a boat in a storm; my eyes, damn them, watered.

  “The mortgage you made my mother sign.”

  Behind him appeared Professor Fay.

  “What’s this? What’s this?”

  “He’s muttering about something.”

  Little sweaty Fay had the decency to flinch. His pitted skin had black pigments like those of a coal miner. He said nothing.

  I stepped away from the fire and made for the door. What I now know is that, despite my terror in the moment, my silence frightened them.

  “You’re not leaving us, are you?” said Professor Fay.

  King Kelly picked up the warning and became the cheery host again.

  “We’re famished. And young lads are always famished, aren’t they?”

  “They are, Tom, they are, Tom.”

  King Kelly called. “Mary!”

  She appeared, smarmy as a courtier.

  “Mary, Mary, quite contrary, will you make us all a sandwich. Not the one sandwich for the three of us. Make three.”

  By the time they’d finished their false laughing I’d sidestepped King Kelly and swerved through the door.

  Not clean away, however—he called me.

  “D’you know about the Golden Rule?”

  I turned, in midstride (by now I was a giant again), and I think I held a pose, as I quoted from our Christian-doctrine class in school.

  “Yes. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

  “What?” King Kelly looked at me as though I had just grown an additional head. “What the blazes are you talking about, boy?”

  “The Golden Rule. Moral reciprocity.”

  “No, boy. The Golden Rule is—the man with the gold makes the rules.”

  This is the point where I think perhaps you’ll begin to dislike me. Feel free—because I did many despicable things. Sin is falling short of your own standards; I discovered that fact at the age of eighteen; I didn’t know what it was before then. In which case I sinned. On a grand scale. Don’t rush to judgment, though; my sins may not be what you think they were. Did I cause them? Or did they “happen” to me? The telling of this tale determines and identifies them.

  Here’s my first offense: I ran away. Appalling. I ran away from Mother and left her to stew in her own gravy—in fear, in dread. After my giant strides (in which I’d accomplished nothing), back to the house I went; in my father’s little office I found the cashbox, took a chunk of money, tiptoed out to the yard, and drove away.

  There’s a place where the driveway bends, and you can look back and see the front door, and I looked back and I saw her. She stood there, not beckoning, not waving, just bewildered.

  That decent, good woman—how could I have done it? How could I have abandoned her like that? At the time when she most needed me? And I knew that she had nobody. Mother had too much pride to ask for help. I had been her lifeline, I knew that, and now I had shredded the strands of that rope, whose threads were already thin.

  Worst of all, I knew what I was doing. I knew I was abandoning her to the dreadful life that had just fallen on top of her and—be shocked by this—I enjoyed doing it. Yes—a part of me relished it. Somewhere inside me, a grim creature spoke, larger than an imp, not quite as big as an ogre, a creature who had not previously existed.

  It said, “Hee-hee, you’re getting away from it all; that’s right—run. Why not? It’s the best thing for you. Therefore it’s the right thing to do.”

  The sun that day shone like the face of beauty. Birds had come back to the fields after winter. A new government was sliding into power. Life was opening up. I was never going home again. “Demure.” A “sweetheart.” Not now, not ever again, no more “obedience” and “conscientiousness” and “responsibility,” the watchwords of my childhood—I’d had far too much of all that.

  The moment when we do things that we shouldn’t is also the moment when we least and most see the truth about ourselves. That has been my experience; maybe it’s different for you. As I drove out through our gateway I thought, I’m not carrying this burden anymore. That was me seeing the least truth of myself. And the most truth at that moment? Simple. I had discovered kissing, and that was what I was going after.

  Kissing, and some notes thereupon, as we take this now-familiar journey to the house in Charleville, on roads empty save for creamery wagons and an almond-eyed goat here and there.

  Once again, go for the language: Here you’ll find a disappointment; I’ve been able to trace few linguistic roots for kiss. Mind you, there’s a limit to the number of people of whom one may inquire. In her later years, and when I was older too, I asked Miss Dora Fay.

  “It’s onomatopoeic. Every culture had a ritual kissing gesture of some kind. And the lips when employed in kissing make a sucking and blowing sound.” And she smiled. “Terrific, isn’t it?”

  One afternoon, not long before he died, I contrived to lead my father to the word.

  “Osculation,” he said immediately, and also quoted verbatim one of his gods, the aforementioned Mr. Bierce; “‘A word invented by the poets as a rhyme for ‘bliss.’” He grew somber. “Don’t ever give in to a pity kiss.”

  He never told me what he meant.

  How surprising
kissing felt. I didn’t know that excitement could have such a dry, cool feeling.

  And—that kissing on Sunday, was that all there was to it? What do I do if saliva escapes? When I’m excited I burble a little, some foam is loosed. “Say it, don’t spray it, MacCarthy,” Mr. O’Toole used to say to me when I was standing up in class.

  I’ve mentioned eyes, haven’t I? Meaning, I didn’t know whether to keep them open or closed. My instinct had been to close them—to concentrate on the enjoyment. Yet I also wanted to see her eyes, guess what she was thinking.

  And—what are we supposed to think about while kissing? I found myself thinking, What about my nose—how do I keep it out of the way? And where do I put the rest of myself? And Is there anybody I can tell about this?

  Breathing too—what to do about it? I didn’t want to blow a gale into the poor girl’s lungs; kissing wasn’t the artificial respiration they taught to lifeguards—at least I knew that much. But if I breathed through my nose wouldn’t she feel my nostrils dilating? And—wouldn’t it be only a matter of minutes before I was heaving like a dragon? Yes—there were things I needed to know here.

  Tightness of embrace? Now we get into the difficult and confusing stuff. When kissing Venetia I felt certain softnesses that I knew to be bosoms. Not bosoms like Aunt Anne’s rock-hard prow. Am I supposed to feel more of them with my chest? Am I supposed to stand back? Is there a recommended stance for all this? I doubted it, because there was also lying down to be considered—eventually.

  You can imagine, can’t you, the clashing sounds in my head as I slowed down the car in Charleville. At least I knew where to find everybody. The pickings had proven so rich in this part of Munster that the show decided to work every small town in the counties of Cork, Limerick, Tipperary, and Waterford. I was to learn that Sarah had decreed Clare too poor and Kerry too sharp-witted: “In the one there’s little financial reward, in the other there’s only emotional defeat.” Meaning that the Clare people wouldn’t or couldn’t spend the money, and the Kerry people knew every line of every Shakespeare play, and knew them better than anybody in the company, including herself and her daughter.