“Just picked it up. His mother had a piano, you know. Years ago. Everyone played something. A musical family. You’d never know it now. The way they live. Fly-by-night.” She clicked her tongue. “There now, that’s enough. I’ve had enough being looked at through a hole,” she admonished me.
I clicked my camera shut, thanked her and left. But at last I had a feeling of earned, if hard-won, truce. I couldn’t resist, though, and I turned at the door and said, “How did Peg react when you told her she’d ruined your sister’s life?”
“Well,” she said, “it didn’t help none.”
I went up to my room and stood before the mirror, scrutinizing my image for what Temple had seen. I was flushed and excited, all right.
Jenny Rose stuck her head in. “Care to go to widow Wooly’s?”
“Who?”
“You know, Seamus’s mother.”
“Oh,” I said. “Sure. I’d love a long walk.” He’ll value me more if I’m not easy to be had, was my thought. “Just let me grab a warm sweater and my stuff.”
“What’s that, your wee bag of film?”
“That’s just what it is.” I ruffled her hair, loving the countrified way she spoke.
We clomped down the stairs. Jenny Rose took a stringbag and filled it with apples, most of a butter cake and a fleet of delicious-looking scones. There was a half bottle of shampoo on the ledge. She drew some water from the tap into it, shook it up, screwed the cap on tight, put it in its own plastic bag then threw that in, too. “She can use that,” she explained. “She’ll use it for everything: dishes, the washing, the lot. Seamus doesn’t always think to stock up on Domestos.” She smiled. “His concerns lie more in the direction of chocolate biscuits.” She opened the door and sunlight dazzled us. Jenny Rose charged ahead. I was more gingerly stepping into the light, I tested the threshold floor with my toe for the ledge. The bright air had a nip to it and I was glad my mother’d made me bring the heavy sweater. There stood Uncle Ned, Liam and Temple Fortune with Morocco in their midst. Behind them was a cart with a ramp they were trying to convince Morocco to get into. They weren’t having much luck. Seamus, left out, squatted on the ground against the shed and watched them.
I tried not to look at Temple.
“Come along, Seamus.” Jenny Rose nudged his cap down over his eyes. “What’s the problem, Uncle Ned?”
“I’ve got him, I’ve got him,” Liam was saying, struggling with Morocco’s bridle.
“Watch ye’self now, lad,” Uncle Ned warned. “Don’t nick his legs.”
“I’m doin’ me best.”
“We’ve got to get him back to Audrey Whitetree-Murphy intact.” There was an unfamiliar note of petulance in Ned’s voice.
They pushed Morocco this way and that, but they didn’t seem to be getting him any closer to the cart. Aunt Bridey and Aunt Dierdre stood in the parlor door, watching, their arms crossed.
Temple Fortune peeked at me from beneath his cap. His face was very red. “Tell you what,” he said. “I’ll stand behind and push and you lot stay in front and pull.”
“That wouldn’t be a wise position to take,” Uncle Ned said. “Just you think about it for a minute.”
“I see what you mean,” Temple said unhappily.
“I wonder what it is they’re doing?” Seamus conversed with some imaginary bystander.
The donkey made airplane landing signals with his ears. Going anywhere didn’t seem to be in his plans. The men stood by in a huddle. Perspiration ran down their faces. Liam took out a package of cigarettes. They discussed what to do.
“Are you finished with the donkey?” Seamus asked them.
“Yeah,” Uncle Ned brushed him off. Then, back to the men, “You know, we could get a female, over in Bantry…”
“That’s the silliest thing I ever did hear,” Liam said.
“Have you no more carrots?” Temple asked them.
Meanwhile, Seamus unhooked the cart and rolled it around past the strategists.
“Morocco’s eaten the carrots from the rabbits and back long ago,” Uncle Ned muttered. “Of course we might try a nice apple.”
“He’s wise to them carrots,” Liam agreed.
“You’ll keep your hands from my apples, do you hear me?” Bridey called across the yard. “They’re more dear than that donkey.”
Seamus placed the ramp of the cart just behind Morocco, then went up to Morocco’s face and took hold of the bit. “Come on, laddie,” he ordered.
Morocco, unperturbed, took his obligatory two steps backwards.
“And if there was something wrong with his blasted legs, it’s her highness would have to do something about it,” Aunt Bridey roared.
“Come on, drive with me to Donneygal,” Seamus urged and pulled him forward.
Morocco took another step backwards, away from Seamus and onto the ramp of the cart with his hind legs.
“Come on, you dog, come on with you.” He yanked him forward, anger in his voice now.
Morocco took a cool set of steps backwards right up the ramp.
“Now, you know you must come,” Seamus pleaded.
Morocco, tail first, slithered his ample behind in the tight-fitting stall. His smug, velvet eyes said “so there.” Seamus dropped the gate, patted the donkey and kicked away the ramp before one of the fellows would trip on it.
“Ready?” Jenny Rose asked him.
“You haven’t forgotten the scones?” He hobbled along down the road right behind us.
Chapter Eight
The road to Castletown goes too far away from the coast and out of the way, so we walked the ledge itself. It was a perfect day. The whitecaps leapt and spangled below and out across the turquoise sea. Brownie was with us. I had my heart in my throat as I watched her jump and twirl after low-flying gulls. “She’s too close to the edge!” I would cry.
“Och! She’s fine.” Jenny Rose would push me as though we were old friends.
Brownie would catch my eye with her own when she’d taken a daring step in any direction. I thought, She really enjoys my distress. I waited ’til Seamus was far up ahead of us. Then I said to Jenny Rose, “Called Mrs. Walsh, did you?”
“Whatever do you mean?” Jenny Rose dug into the bag and came up with a crisp apple. We walked single file now, descending a path tangled on each side with bracken and thorny growth.
“His landlady in Baltimore just happened to mention that salmon?”
“Didn’t hurt anything.” Jenny Rose’s eyes twinkled. “There really is a great salmon. Tantalos. Everyone’s always yellin’ to get the tourist share down our way. Stop taking my picture, if you don’t mind.”
“I thought nobody wanted them.”
“Yeah, well, half do, half don’t. It’s like some want foreigners buyin’ homes down here, some are dead put-off by it. Claim the land should stay in the families.”
“Who’s that?” A lone figure made its way toward us across the cliff. It was a woman. We watched her bent-forward determined progress.
“It’s Molly, I think.”
She came closer. Yes it was Molly. She waved at us. We met her at the top point.
“Well, here we are.” She laughed.
“Visiting Mrs. Wooly?” Jenny Rose nudged her flying hair under her workman’s cap.
“The Kulbachs.” She wagged the top of her head behind her, indicating the German family, I took it, who’d bought the Wooly house.
“Everythin’ all right there?” Jenny Rose said above the wind.
“Right as rain. They’ve relations and friends coming for the summer. Booked out my whole place.”
“No wanting there.” Jenny Rose looked at me meaningfully.
“Wallets fat and fit as fiddles,” Molly agreed. “Nothing wrong with that, is there?” She narrowed her eyes at Jenny Rose.
“It’s just when local folk face hard times, those rich Germans are right there to buy up the land.”
“Isn’t it good someone wants it?” Molly said, snorting.
Jenny Ros
e’s face remained sulky. “People ought to keep their land.”
“When will you be comin’ down?” Molly ignored her and asked me, her hair whipping across her face.
“Tonight,” I said, snapping her picture.
“See you then,” she called over her shoulder, hurrying past.
“Nice lady,” I said.
“She’s a good neighbor,” Jenny Rose agreed, grudgingly.
She yelled something we couldn’t make out.
“What?” we called back.
“Come before seven,” she called, “and I’ll give you a key!”
“Okay!” I waved and we continued our march.
“About Temple…” I said.
“Yeah?”
“He’s wonderful, isn’t he?”
“He’s good-looking enough, if that’s what you mean.”
“No, I know he’s goo— I mean that part’s obvious. It’s just—”
“I got him here for you, didn’t I?” she said indignantly.
“Yes.” My silk square blew off my head. It flew out over the ocean and stayed up in the air, flipping about, for the longest time. We watched it. Then down it floated, down, down into the salty purple deep.
Seamus had started to run. We were getting close to his house and the big lumbering fellow just took off. We had to trot to keep him in view. The cliffs softened and there was a sandy cove with a house just on the water. Seamus looked at it, ran toward it ’til Jenny Rose called out, “No, Seamus, stop! It’s the other one!”
Seamus turned, his arms at his sides, anguish on his face.
“He’s forgotten again.” Then she called, “It’s all right, sweetie. It’s the other house. Up the lane.” She waved her arm offshore. Brownie was already headed up the lane, barking. It hit Seamus all of a sudden, his expression filled with delight. “Mam!” he cried and he ran up the lane toward a little house, all but invisible at first. It was stone and the roof was matted with kelp.
“Once in a while he forgets,” Jenny Rose explained apologetically.
“What would he do if you weren’t here?” I panted. We were both out of breath. “Go to the old house?”
She sighed and flung the apple core into the sea before we turned off into the hedge. “He never does, when he’s alone … or just with me. He’s just excited because you’re along, that’s all.” She frowned. “Once or twice, he did go there.”
“What happened?”
She stood and looked toward the house on the sea. “Nothing,” she said, but I had the feeling she was lying. I was beginning to learn when she was lying; she had this bad-actress self-conscious sincerity you can’t miss. If she didn’t stop doing that, she’d wind up a first-class sphinx like my husband, Johnny. You never knew what he was thinking. Just the thought of him enraged me. Unhappily, I stretched my neck in every direction, seeking relief. I hardly saw the boxhedge or the blue slate foot-stones up to the house, then I noticed how neatly they were swept and I came back to myself. I breathed the refreshing air.
The little door ahead was open, from Jenny Rose going in. It was so small you had to bend down to go through. “Shut the door,” Jenny Rose called. My ears and hands and feet were cold and I was glad to be inside. The spinning wheel was between the bog fire and a kerosene heater. I’d never seen one outside of a museum. The fire was lit and the heater on full blast. A pale light edged its way from the fire. We’d brought the cold in with us but you could tell the chugging warmth would soon take back over. I removed my heavy sweater. The smell of old age, apothecary jars, and the past mingled with seaweed drying on a grid on a shelf in the fireplace. The goats were leaning up against the window, bleating to get in, hopeless, adorable.
I stood in the middle of the room on a little rag rug.
“Claire, this is Mrs. Wooly. Here she is, come on, you can touch her.”
I was so taken aback I didn’t know what to do. There in front of me, shriveled and waxen, the oldest-looking, tiniest lady I’d ever seen lay curled beneath a plaid horse blanket. My first thought was that she must be dead. Her mouth was caved in where teeth had once held up the fort. When she turned her milky eyes on me, I was just about terrified. If Jenny Rose hadn’t been there, I would have turned and run.
Slowly, a minute claw was presented to me from beneath the cover. I had nothing to do but take it into my own hand. It felt like wood. No, glass. But as I stood there holding it, the gnarled fingers loosened and unfolded and the smooth, curious softness of her palm took hold of mine. There the flesh was plusher than mine.
Muted words I didn’t understand came toward me.
“It’s Gaelic,” Jenny Rose said. “She’s speaking our own tongue.”
Not knowing what to say, I said what my mother would have: “God bless all inside this home,” loud and clear, that way she would hear me.
“She said she wants her teeth,” Jenny Rose said.
“Oh,” I said.
“She hears the grass grow.” Jenny Rose leaned into the bed and gently propped her into a sitting position, fluffing pillows behind her crooked back. “It’s seeing she can’t do. Seamus, go get her teeth. You know where she puts them.”
Brownie fiddled about under Mrs. Wooly’s bed, then begged to go outside to torture the goats.
Seamus moved out from his place against the wall. He had this way of making himself invisible that I found so disconcerting. He wouldn’t go, though; just stood there chugging from side to side, one foot to the other, like some huge, well-behaved dog who’d been told time and again not to jump up on his mistress.
“Och!” Jenny Rose threw her arms in the air and went to look for the teeth herself. Mrs. Wooly craned around the dim room till she spotted Seamus, then patted the bed beside her. He fell onto the spot, never bending, just thunk, landed there, his funny face flattened into a delirious grin. Mrs. Wooly petted him, crooning all the while in a scrawny singsong. He answered her in an identical whistle, just deeper. Beautiful, I thought. I leaned against the refrigerator-sized radio. It rolled away from me. I pulled it back and leaned against the wall. Their keening blended together in the most mesmerizing sound. They began again, a Gaelic tune. Worried, I thought, What will happen, now? Will they sing all morning? I itched to reload my camera but didn’t want to offend anyone or Jenny Rose would yell.
She poked her head around the corner from the bathroom. “Who’s been here?” Her voice was five parts fear, five parts confidence.
“Young Murphy,” Mrs. Wooly answered in English, remembering. She leaned on one arm and shifted herself up with some strength. “He’s down the gate,” she added, her musical brogue gentle with understanding.
Jenny Rose didn’t answer. I had a feeling she was looking in the mirror.
Mrs. Wooly turned to me. “Go bring the tea, missy,” she said.
“Okay,” I said and got up, poking around for cups in the dusty, free-standing cupboard. I love dusty old cream cupboards, thick with paint. There were canning jars with flower decals on them from years ago. The cups were there, up front, Chinese or Japanese, with delicate lips and worn enamel dragons. They were a little dingy but I thought I’d do more harm than good if I made a hefty, hygienic scrub so I just did as I was told, gave them a hot rinse and laid them out on the metaltop wooden table. Two of them didn’t match.
Jenny Rose came in and went to the cupboard herself. Her cheeks were pink with excitement. “I don’t know who keeps bringing her these tins,” she muttered, pushing the sardines and chutney off to the side. “She can’t hold the opener to get anything out of them. I mean, people just don’t think.”
“I can hold it some days,” Mrs. Wooly said imperiously. Then humbly, “I just can’t get a grip on the bugger to turn it.”
“Never mind.” Jenny Rose had found the china windmill of sugar and put it on the table. “Claire,” she told me, “move this table closer to the bed with me, will you?” Mrs. Wooly was sitting up, her shiny legs not reaching the floor. Right away her little ankles filled with edema. Sh
e swept her head up sideways, bravely. The effort must have cost her. You could see her wince. She mopped her face with a yellowed hanky. A dingy commode awaited on rickety legs.
I opened the stringbag of goodies and slid them onto a plate. It was a chipped Lalique, old as the hills and decorated with pretty pink roses. There was another one with purple and yellow pansies. I put them both out.
Jenny Rose hopped lightly onto the side of the bed. On the night table was a handsome soft-bristled brush. “Now”—Jenny Rose cleared her throat—“we’ll dandy you up a bit, first.”
You could tell the old lady revelled in the young girl’s delicate touch. Jenny Rose unwound the coil of yellowed white hair and spread it over the old woman’s crooked back. She moaned with pleasure as Jenny Rose slid the brush down and then down again. The hair was so light and feathery, it didn’t take her long to separate the knotted strands at all. So many years those hairs had been maneuvered into place that now they almost found their obedient ways on their own. Like my father’s car driving itself home from the bowling alley.
“You sound a little wheezy,” Jenny Rose clucked.
“Still have a touch of that cold, I guess,” Mrs. Wooly said. “Forgot to take that echinacea you left in the cabinet.”
“Now you know these colds,” Jenny Rose scolded, “they take a week with medication, seven days without.”
The windchimes outside rattled. “That’s a north-east wind, that is,” Mrs. Wooly shouted. “There’s good for your angling, Seamus.”
“Aye,” Seamus agreed. He was sitting up, all set now for the scones unveiled.
“Would you be mindin’ if Claire took some black and white photographs of your wheel?” Jenny Rose said.
“Not a bit. I like a black and white photo.” She picked up a button and threw it at the window at the bleating goats, mad to get in. “Makes me feel young.”
“Bull’s eye,” Jenny Rose said.
Mrs. Wooly smiled and nodded encouragingly as Seamus devoured half of the scones without waiting for the jam. She felt my look, I know she did, because she said, “I’ve had some already, you know, so don’t think of me. Mr. Willy Murphy always thinks of me, he does.”
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