*
Debbie stuffed her hands in her pockets and walked against the wind on Main Street. She had been mad to come here; she felt that now. She did not notice when Muriel Hearty waved as she closed up the post office for the day or when Pat McCarthy, chatting at his doorway, saluted her. She was grateful for the family this place had given her, even with all that had happened, but why now, especially now, were there no answers to her questions? She felt like a child again who was not being told, protected from the truth for whatever reason. The sense of helplessness was the same as when sad Rob had tried to build a type of normality back into their lives.
She and Rob, they had stayed with Nancy for two weeks. It was a Saturday morning, early, when Rob announced they were going to move back home. Nancy was dismayed and ushered him to the side, whispering fiercely that it was too early and pleading that the child was not ready. When he could not be moved from his decision, she pleaded to be allowed to keep Debbie.
‘I need her help back home. She knows what to do. God knows, she spent long enough at her mother’s elbows.’
They walked the two blocks side by side. Neighbours pretended not to notice. He quickened his pace as they got closer and she had to scurry to keep up with him.
When they reached the front gate he moved even faster, covering the stone driveway in three strides and lightly skipping up the front steps, as if he were a ballet dancer on stage. He beckoned Debbie to follow.
‘I don’t want to have to push you in, but I will. It’s best to get it over and done with.’
She tried to shrink back among the raspberry canes and flower beds. A red cardinal sat on a window ledge, pecking at the sill. In one stride, Rob came to her and, grabbing her roughly by the arm, pulled her towards the house. Her feet slid across the porch as she half-heartedly resisted her father’s urgent grip.
‘I don’t know any other way. Mommy has left us like this. Now we must get on with it, until she decides to come back.’
He was slightly out of breath, but he did not hesitate for a second. He turned the key and pushed the door. It gave way freely, the door fanning back so they could see the height of the stairs. Sunshine flooded into the hall. The kitchen clock ticked loudly. The floor tiles were polished and the coat stand was empty.
‘I thought you might like to have something of Mommy’s in your room. The necklaces; I thought you would like to mind them for Mommy, and her dressing table. We can move it into your room, if you like.’
Shrinking back, Debbie shook her head fiercely.
‘Sweetheart, I’m only trying to help.’
Debbie knew she would never want the sparkly necklaces. They still belonged to her mother; she had declared her rights to perpetual ownership. Hadn’t she told her so, screamed at the top of her voice two days before she left that she was never to look at or touch the jewellery again? She could still feel the softness of her spit spraying over her, when Agnes had stuck her face in hers. Tiny holes in her skin were clogged with fine brown powder; her nostrils flared red.
Mommy had been in such a good mood when Debbie came home from school, singing as she pushed the power pedal on the sewing machine. Debbie, who was sent to tidy her room, saw a new pearl necklace had been laid out on Agnes’s dressing table. The whirr of the machine on a long, straight seam gave her the confidence to step inside the room. Three lines of pearls and a diamante clasp were draped side by side. It hypnotised her with its perfect simplicity. She should have left it at that, but, mesmerised, she could not leave. The only thing she could do was reach out and touch one of the strands, picking it up and letting the beads run through her fingers. So transfixed was she by the feel of the pearls, like light rain on her cheeks, she never realised the machine had come to the end of the long evening-skirt seam.
‘What’s going on?’ Agnes asked.
‘I was just looking.’
‘Really? Who gave you permission to put your grubby little hands on my pearls?’ Her mother’s arms were folded across her chest, her eyes cold and hard.
‘I was just looking and then I picked it up. It’s beautiful.’
She held the pearls closer. She did not expect her mother to hit her, so when the slap came stinging across her cheek, it knocked her sideways, making her stumble into the dressing table. The pearls shot out of her hand, skittering across the floor; bottles rattled and two tubes of make-up slipped to the floor.
‘You are a thief in the making. Don’t think you can even look at my jewellery. Do you understand? It’s mine. I don’t want your dirty paws near my necklaces again.’
Pushing Debbie roughly out of the room, Agnes banged the door shut. Debbie ran to her own room, where she curled up tight on the bed, sobbing, her tears dampening the pillow.
7
Mother Assumpta paced up and down, keeping an ear open for O’Hare’s car. When Consuelo had asked for permission to visit she’d wanted to refuse, but knew it mattered little because Consuelo would do as she pleased anyway. Considerably older than Assumpta, Consuelo had expected to be appointed to the chief’s chair when Mother Bridget died two years ago. She not only showed her surprise but also her disgust when the much younger Assumpta was named as Bridget’s successor.
‘After all I have done for this community and those on the outside. There are children across the world who have me to thank for their very good fortune and lives. Not that I ever would go seeking their thanks or gratitude, but I would have expected some recognition within my own community,’ she muttered to anybody who cared to listen.
When the first flush of indignation had passed and Assumpta settled into her role, Consuelo appeared to begrudgingly accept the inevitability of the situation. In the past six months, however, as more and more came to make enquiries about their birth mother and named Consuelo as the adoption facilitator, tensions between the two nuns had grown.
Assumpta sat in the armchair by the window. She felt weary. She should have been more forceful with Consuelo when the woman from Donegal had come asking questions four months ago. It was a familiar story: there was no record of the birth, but of course she had Consuelo’s name and a goddamned letter the nun had penned in a fit of simpering gratitude, decades earlier, to the adoptive parents.
Consuelo refused to budge, sticking to the mantra that she had done no wrong and the God Almighty could be her judge. When the young woman threatened to go to the newspapers, Assumpta retaliated with the threat of an injunction and the public humiliation of having her name in the newspapers for harassing the convent.
The strategy worked, but Assumpta, upset by the aggressive stand she had had to take, moved Consuelo to the Moyasta convent in the hope her unavailability would turn away even the most determined.
She watched the daffodils swaying in the breeze, the blur of gentle yellow across the park a sad reminder of the indignity of pregnant women put to weeding and planting bulbs for the whole of the month of October, rain, hail or shine. Little did those who admired the swathes of daffodils, snowdrops and crocuses know of the back-breaking toil and knee-grinding pain involved for the women, many of whom were in their final weeks of pregnancy.
Closing her eyes, the sounds of the convent were her calming backdrop: the faraway shimmer of Sister Christina’s giggle as she indulged in gossip Martha’s sewing machine, which fell silent at eleven each morning when she went to the kitchens for a coffee; and the hens clucking loudly, waiting still to be fed, because Sister Bernadette had dallied too long at the pig sty. That this normality would be upset by Consuelo was a major aggravation for Mother Assumpta, who decided to take a painkiller.
Gerry O’Hare’s car swung to the steps; he got out to open the car door for Consuelo.
She pulled her big frame from the back seat and rummaged in her handbag until she found her purse. She pushed a generous tip into the palm of O’Hare’s hand on top of the fare after he neatly placed all her luggage in a line beside the front door.
Assumpta waited for Marguerite to greet the visitor, bef
ore sitting at her desk, pretending to be writing a letter. Consuelo’s voice bounced through the hall as she bustled into Assumpta’s office without knocking.
‘It is so lovely to be home. This is where I started out and this is where I always want to be. You understand that, Mother Assumpta, surely.’
Mother Assumpta rose up and smiled gently, motioning with her hand for Consuelo to sit down. Consuelo ignored her, walking over to the fireplace.
‘You really should have an open fire; there’s a fierce nip in the air today.’
Mother Assumpta waited patiently for the chatter to stop.
‘The cases, Consuelo?’
Consuelo whipped around and flopped into a comfortable chair at Assumpta’s desk, her face suddenly serious. ‘I have to take the bull by the horns, so to speak. I am moving back. You can’t deny me that as I approach my twilight years, Mother.’
‘You never said, when you requested a meeting.’
‘I need to be among my own; I have done my time in Moyasta. I want to come home.’
‘It is hardly proper to be moving in before even applying to move.’
Consuelo stood. ‘I was never one for formality, Mother. Is it this nonsense with the American that has upset you?’
Consuelo was very good at turning the conversation around, Assumpta thought, and she felt anger stab through her. She stiffened in her chair and straightened the writing sheets on her desk.
Consuelo walked over to the window. ‘I miss this place and the daffodils; I so wanted to see them in bloom. I remember when we planted every single one.’
Assumpta cleared her throat. ‘That may be, Consuelo, but I do not think we have room.’
Consuelo swung around and clapped her hands. ‘The young girl, Sister Marion, is desperately homesick. Why not let her go back to Moyasta? She is from those parts and I can take over her quarters; I am not fussy.’
Assumpta felt her hands clench to fists, and she placed them on her lap. ‘Quite impossible. Sister Marion is an important and integral part of our community here and must learn to swallow her homesickness.’
‘Are you refusing me?’ Consuelo marched across to the desk and stood leaning over Assumpta.
‘Until this thing about the American blows over, the safest and best place for you is Moyasta.’
‘You are afraid I will shoot off my mouth, aren’t you?’
‘I don’t know what you are talking about and I do not want to know. What I am saying is, having a high profile in the community here would not be helpful at the moment.’
Consuelo looked deflated, like a child told she could not go swimming after all. ‘You are not seriously going to send me back, are you?’
‘I am asking you to go back, Consuelo. We can manage to put you up for tonight, but that is all.’
Assumpta could hear the tick of the hall clock as Consuelo sat down massaging her fingers.
‘I did the best I could for every child; nobody can say different. Just because some people won’t accept the answers in black and white, the official records of this convent, does not mean I should be penalised.’
‘You are not being penalised. We simply do not want the whole thing blowing up in our faces.’
‘What is new in these parts?’
Assumpta smiled to herself. Consuelo would never admit she was beaten, but merely changed the subject.
‘Jimmy Doohan, the farmer who owns the fields across the way, has died,’ Assumpta said, trying to make her voice sound conversational and friendly.
‘We will need to show our faces at the funeral. If the family sell off the land around the convent, our privacy will be gone.’
‘We will cross that bridge when we come to it.’
Mother Assumpta stood up as the lunch bell sounded, catching Consuelo gently but firmly by the elbow.
‘Ella O’Callaghan has set up a café in the house.’
‘At Roscarbury Hall?’
‘Upstairs. Fr Devine says it is wonderful. He has coffee there every morning after late Mass.’
Sister Consuelo turned sharply to Assumpta. ‘What sort of madness has come over her, letting people into the house?’
‘The front door has been opened up. The place is looking good.’
Consuelo pulled in a whistling breath. ‘There must have been a sea change in Ella O’Callaghan. Sure, she would not let you past the kitchen. A gardener once told me he had to piss outside, because there was no point asking about going upstairs to the loo. Rusted up a right good plant in the process, he did.’
‘Sister Consuelo, please watch your language.’
There was a loud whoop of welcome for Consuelo when she walked into the basement kitchen and took up her usual position to the right of Mother Assumpta at the long, rectangular table.
One woman stood by the Aga, ladling food from different saucepans onto plates, which were then passed from sister to sister along the table. The same was done at the end of the table, where another nun, wearing a charcoal-grey jumper and jeans, handed out glasses of juice. Consuelo chatted loudly to the woman on her right.
‘The way this country is being run, there will be no young people left. McInerney in the High Street, his three sons have left; he does not think any one of them will want to come back and make a life here.’
‘Consuelo, you always were the heartthrob of the town. A few minutes back and you have us all up to date; I don’t know how you do it,’ Sister Marion said, in an attempt to join the conversation.
Consuelo, buoyed up by the praise, straightened in her seat, throwing her shoulders back. ‘Years of practice, Marion, mean I am very much in tune with the common man or woman,’ she replied, her voice at a high pitch. Her habit of looking over her glasses made her look pompous, as well as sounding it.
Assumpta quietly picked at her stew, wondering if Consuelo would leave tomorrow morning or if she would hatch up another plan to stay.
8
There was such a flurry of activity around Roscarbury Hall over one weekend that those who lived in the town could not but notice something big was afoot. But it was Muriel Hearty who decided to make the trip down the road to find out. After the post office closed for a half day, she had her husband drop her at the big gates.
Ella and Debbie had gone on a special shopping expedition to Gorey, ordering fifteen round wooden tables for inside and wrought-iron round for outside, red and white check tablecloths, and plenty of strong chairs. Little red candles in glass holders were purchased for the centre of each table along with boxes of cutlery. Red napkins were bought in bulk, and new cake tins and bun trays by the dozen. Debbie’s advice was taken on a sophisticated coffee machine and a hot-water geyser.
Back at Roscarbury, they set to work with a renewed vigour, dragging the cobwebs from the high ceiling and hoovering up runaway spiders. Ella and Debbie donned thick rubber gloves and washed and swabbed until they ached. The dust was beaten out of thick old carpets, and window nets were dipped in bleach before being rinsed and put back on the tracks immediately, to avoid creasing. Rolled-up balls of newspaper were used to make the old window glass sparkle, and the silver and brass were polished until the cloth went black. Leather chairs were massaged with sweet-scented furniture polish, and years of grime scraped away. Velvet drapes were sent for dry-cleaning, and the upholstered couches sponged and left near the window to dry. Pots of cut flowers were placed about. The hall table was sprayed and polished, the walls washed and the floors scrubbed until they gleamed.
One morning, Debbie took down the big key from its nail beside the front door and left it to soak in oil, pouring an ocean more into the old lock.
‘This grand house needs the front door,’ she said.
Ella did not tell her that the door had remained shut since the day of Michael’s funeral; she did not let on she had wanted it that way. They sat and had tea with thick slabs of chocolate cake as the oil softened years of rigid dirt.
An hour later, giggling like a nervous schoolgirl, Ella walked u
p to the heavy wooden door, last opened when the coffin of Michael Hannigan was carried out after he had been waked for a day and a night. Ella attempted to turn the key. Stiff at first, reluctant to let go of its rusty lethargy, the lock slowly clanked to life, coaxed by the big key, and the bolt slid back with a dull thud. It took Debbie, heaving and pushing from the other side, lending her weight to the door, to make it give way with a rasping creak, and it groaned after decades of sitting tight with neglect and let the light spill into the hallway.
Debbie worked like a woman possessed, brushing down the door and the lintel, the dust falling into her hair, the indignant spiders and beetles racing around her feet in frantic chaos. The water went brown several times over as the door was washed down and layer upon layer of dust picked out of the corners. John Sheehy was tidying the rhododendron when he saw Debbie wiping down the door. She scrubbed with a heavy brush before spraying the wood with disinfectant. So intent was she on the work she did not seem to notice a run of water was drenching her shoes and the ends of her jeans.
She was exhilarated, but an awful fatigue was taking her over and she hoped she could last the day until she could go back to her place and lie down.
‘I see Ella has roped you in as well.’
Debbie did not turn from her work. ‘I am glad to help her.’
The gardener plucked a half-decent bloom from the rhododendron and held it out to Debbie. ‘Tell Ella I will start digging out the rills tomorrow morning. I am knocking off early today.’
She did not know what he meant by either the flower or the message. Before she could formulate anything in her head, he was heading to the jeep. He waved as he drove past, and she smiled.
Concentrating on the doorknob and handle, she scrubbed and polished; the lock she tried several times, until it was free running. Weeds were picked out of the cracks on the front steps, which were brushed and sluiced with warm water. The postman stopped to admire the work and left the letters on the hall table.
The Ballroom Café Page 5