Jenny Rose

by Mary Anne Kelly

  In came Murphy, light on his feet. He rested a broom very gently on the threshold and rubbed his hands before him. “Better than it was,” he said, assessing his work. “Cold today.” He was wearing the same salt and pepper fisherman’s sweater he’d had on my first day here. Jenny Rose’s and his eyes collided.

  “Will you sit with us t’day, Mr. Murphy?” Jenny Rose couldn’t suppress a radiant smile.

  “I’d be delighted, Bonnie Jenny Rose Cashin.” He swept low in a dashing bow. “Oh!” he stood up suddenly. “I almost forgot! I’ve got oranges from Tunisia!”

  “Go on with you!” Mrs. Wooly cried, clapping her hands in her lap.

  “No, I do. I left them at the gate in a wooden box.” He ran outside.

  “He leaves anything outside in the dell in case you-know-who is here,” Mrs. Wooly whispered.

  “Who?” I said.

  “Molly,” Jenny Rose said.

  “She’s a fine one for sticking to the doctor’s rules, y’see,” Mrs. Wooly explained. “No citrus before cereal. And no wine with the heart medicine!”

  “Well!” Jenny Rose said. “We put a stop to that.”

  “You’re right,” I agreed. “You can’t mix alcohol with those medications. It negates all the good they do.”

  “No, dear.” Mrs. Wooly patted my hand. “We put a stop straightaway to the medication.”

  They both had a good laugh.

  Willy Murphy reappeared moments later with the cardboard box. It was filled over the top with tight-skinned, glistening oranges.

  “Where did you get them?” Mrs. Wooly said.

  “Three boats come in at once over in Baltimore.”

  “They’re that curious with the film ship about,” Jenny Rose said. “Think they might get a look at a film star with her top off.”

  Seamus stood up in expectation.

  “Give one here.” Jenny Rose tapped her pointer finger on the table. Willy threw one across the room and she caught it with one hand. Their eyes locked. A blush ran up her cheeks like tipped-over beets.

  “Did Morocco make it back home all right?” I asked, sitting down on a hassock.

  “Much to my mother’s chagrin,” Willy said.

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “I thought he was your mom’s donkey.”

  “It’s a long story,” Jenny Rose said.

  “Here, Mrs. Benedetto.” Willy came over with an armload of newspapers to sit upon and make me higher. “My mother never was one to care for animals.”

  “Thank you, Willy Murphy,” I said. “But, please call me Claire.” I put my sweater over the papers and sat down. “It’s so confusing, between my married name and my working name. So why does she keep Morocco?”

  “The thing is, she keeps trying to get rid of him. She’s allergic, see? But that donkey loves her. And whenever she sells him he finds his way back.”

  Jenny Rose nodded. “It’s awful.”

  “Especially when she has to return the money,” Willy said.

  Mrs. Wooly fingered my sweater. “Cape Clear knots,” she said.

  “Really?” I said. “How can you tell?”

  “You know. You learn whose knots are whose, from which family, over the years. The knots differ from village to village and then family to family. So’s they can identify a drowned ’un.” She leaned across and I could feel her light breath on my cheek. “After a body’s been in the drink for a while it’s divil hard to identify.”

  “I’ll bet,” I said.

  Willy Murphy gazed out the window.

  Jenny Rose frowned. I could see she didn’t care for the turn our conversation had taken. I remembered Liam telling me Audrey Whitetree-Murphy’s husband had drowned when he’d gone over the cliff in his father-in-law’s Bentley. That would be Willy’s dad. “Come on, Seamus”—she hit his knee with the back of her hand—“tell them what a sweater is.”

  He looked at her blankly.

  “You remember.”

  His childlike face lit up. “A sweater is something a child has to wear when his mother’s feeling chilly.”

  “Very good!” they all said.

  “What do you feed the goats, Mrs. Wooly?” I asked.

  She put herself up on an arm. “Hay, oats, barley, corn. Molasses. There will be mice with molasses. Sweet. That’s what they like. These are Nubian goats. Nubian goats give the sweetest milk. They have Oberhausliis, Tagenburgs and Alpines. But Nubians give the sweetest milk. Unless you’ve got a male around. They pick up that frowsy scent.”

  I looked over at Jenny Rose to see how she was taking this. But she was just absorbing everything in that intent way she had.

  “That donkey come on a boat,” Seamus said proudly.

  “No he didn’t, Seamus. He was born right here in Skibbereen,” Willy said.

  “Boats are the big thing, you know,” Jenny Rose explained. “No end of interesting things to be seen when the boats come in, aren’t there, Seamus?”

  “Yes.”

  “All sorts of illegal fruits and coffee.” Willy piled the oranges carefully into a triangle.

  “And cigarettes,” Mrs. Wooly said.

  “Oh, there’s not so much of that,” Willy Murphy said sadly.

  “Yes. Remember the time the cigarette boat from Casablanca to Lisbon got caught in the storm and they docked her at Baltimore?” Jenny Rose said.

  “Everyone had cigarettes for weeks.” Mrs. Wooly got excited. “Bernadette made a pretty penny, too.”

  “Well, yes, there is that,” Willy admitted, not liking his Ireland to look clandestine, I imagined. “There are those who’ll make money from a stone.”

  “I thought you liked Bernadette,” I said to him, a note of challenge in my voice.

  He moved his mouth out, shut. “I like all the Cashins and the Mulderrigs,” he said. He yanked his big pullover over his head, revealing a wrinkled purple T-shirt.

  “Things can’t always find their way through customs.” Jenny Rose frowned. “Not when nature plays a hand.”

  “Like when they just land on the beach,” Mrs. Wooly added.

  Jenny Rose’s eyes blazed. “If it’s presented to you it’s hard not to take it.” She was meaning something else.

  “And guns.” Seamus’s eyes shone.

  They all looked at me. “Will you have a fresh scone, Claire.” Willy passed the plate. He’d decorated it, while we were sitting there, with sage leaves and thyme.

  “Claire is Mary Cashin’s daughter.” Jenny Rose broke open the first orange. It smelled wonderful.

  “Put those peels above the fire, Jenny Rose, there’s a good girl. They’ll be incense for me later.”

  “These aren’t sprayed, like the American oranges, with pesticides,” Willy Murphy explained.

  “Ah,” I said. “Certainly not. Far be it from a Tunisian to make an unecological profit.”

  “Mary Cashin,” Mrs. Wooly said dreamily. “Dierdre, Brigid and Mary Cashin. I remember Mary as well as the rest of them. Good-hearted, Mary was.” She looked tenderly at Jenny Rose. “Brought us nothing but love, Mary did. And you say she’s well?” The chin hairs stood out sturdily in the light, her hair had balded in one spot, but the sweetness of her expression made her unearthly lovely.

  “She’s all right now, but she had a slight heart attack. That’s why she couldn’t come herself for—”

  Mrs. Wooly counted out loud on her fingers. “Mary left for the States, then Brigid married good Ned Mulderrig.” She turned her head sideways. “Not without a grand fight from Audrey Whitetree, though.” She chuckled. “And poor Dierdre was left with nothing more than Peg.”

  “What do you mean, Mrs. Wooly?” I said.

  “Well, you see,” she whispered, her eyes lighting up, “Dierdre and Peg took up like man and wife.”

  “No, I mean about Audrey Whitetree-Murphy? Did she used to have a crush on Uncle Ned?”

  “Ouch!” Jenny Rose jumped. “Must have sit on a pin! Say, Claire, why don’t you whip out your camera. I’m su
re no one will mind.”

  “Yes.” Mrs. Wooly peeled the yellowy seams from the orange and put them in a horrible pile. She buffetted it around with an arthritic knuckle. “Peg was always a sour note,” she said. “Nothing pleased her. Even Dierdre, who she loved. You know the way Dierdre is, silly and flouncy. Up in the clouds. Wasn’t Peg always at her for that very thing. Imagine trying to change the very thing it is you love about a person!”

  The wild, fierce will of my husband came to mind. The way I’d hollered at him when it all got to be too much. With my face full of hate. I bit my lip.

  “One time,” Willy said, “Peg closed the road. The coast road up to Bally Cashin.”

  “Well, does the road belong to Bally Cashin?”

  “A road doesn’t belong to any a man,” Willy said passionately.

  “Better if she’d never been born,” Seamus agreed.

  Silence. Then, “Ooh, now,” they all chimed at once.

  “Every one of God’s children has a right,” Mrs. Wooly said. “Ah, yes, those days are gone, now, when the Cashin girlies reigned. Down the lane they’d come blowin’ in, puffy with crinolines in their rayon dresses. One prettier than the other.”

  I filled with pleasure, listening to her.

  “They used to come down to the old house with records.”

  “What records?” I wanted to know.

  “Oh. Glenn Miller. Harry James. I loved that Glenn Miller.” She shook her head. “My Dan used to get up and dance when they’d put him on.”

  “That’s my dad.” Seamus grinned. “But we didn’t have him long.”

  “No, we didn’t.” She smiled reminiscently. “But didn’t he love those old songs! What was that song he used to get up for? ‘Long Ago and Far Away,’” her old voice waddled. “That was it. Good songs, those. Ah, well, that’s all over now. Now it’s the new generation, isn’t that right, Jenny Rose?”

  “Mmm,” Jenny Rose answered absently. We were all drowsy with the fire. It didn’t do any good talking to the two of them. Jenny Rose sat, poised, on the voluptuous coral hassock. Willy was pale as green almost, with veins like raised rivers that pulsed and wound up and down his neck and arms and hands. As many times as they would look away from each other, they’d find themselves looking back.

  “And then Peg come along and ruined it all for everyone,” Seamus said out of nowhere.

  “Well, she didn’t ruin it all, Seamus. Those were different days. Things weren’t like they are now. You kept things more to yourself, like.”

  “She did, too. Mary Cashin didn’t like her dancin’ with her sister. You said it!”

  I sat up. “It was my mom who objected to Peg?”

  Nobody looked at me.

  “Mind you,” Mrs. Wooly warmed to the subject, “no one could say a word about the two a them.” She mashed an orange slice onto a scone and drizzled it with honey. More of the honey landed on the plate, though. “About them takin’ up together. They were always dead discreet. Well, mostly. It was enough just knowin’, if you know what I mean. But I was just saying to Seamus last week that that’s no life. It’s silly, dressin’ up in men’s clothes.”

  “Och!” Jenny Rose cried out as she let Brownie, back in. “You’re all wet! You’re a night in November, now look at you!”

  “What’s she got, there?” Willy said.

  “Why, it’s my scarf!” I said. “She went and fetched my scarf!”

  “She’s got to be in and out all the blithering day.” Jenny Rose mopped the linoleum floor with a rolled-up rag beneath her foot.

  Brownie put the thing on the floor, not next to me but close enough.

  I gave the dog a wrestling hug, wet or no wet. “You can’t beat a dog,” I said.

  “No, you can’t,” Willy agreed. “You see that Oriental? Under Jenny Rose?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You used to play on that. Remember?”

  Jenny Rose ran her hand along it lovingly. “I do. It was my magic carpet, this.”

  “You used to go places on it, remember? Where was it you’d go?”

  “Norway. Baghdad.”

  “Right. Norway. With your dolls. The whole carpet would be filled with grubby dolls.”

  “Shut up.”

  Mrs. Wooly squinted at me. “Was there something you wanted specially to photograph?”

  I jumped. “Oh,” I said. “Yeah.” I stood up and got out my camera, then sort of strolled around while they talked. There was very little light but I didn’t have to worry about using highspeed film with my Contex. It would come out a touch grainy, but I never mind that. I puttered around, shooting the loom, the pretty window, the stove and the oven, this and that until they’d get bored with me enough to relax, which they did. Then I could catch them off-guard. They were discussing money. Money for Mrs. Wooly. The roof would make it through this summer it seemed, but what would happen in the fall?

  “Now, you children don’t fret. I’ll be glad if I make it myself through the summer,” she said.

  “Don’t even talk like that,” Jenny Rose reprimanded her. She was sketching the woman’s old face on one of Mrs. Wooly’s torn recipe cards.

  “I wouldn’t mind, dear. One more summer would be lovely. Just the one. I don’t think I could bear another winter, truth be told.”

  “I don’t suppose we could have another auction?” Willy suggested unenthusiastically.

  I put my camera down. “And what about Dierdre?” I said. “Shouldn’t we do something for Dierdre?”

  “You?” Willy Murphy said. “You’ll be back in America the fortnight.”

  And you, I thought but did not say, haven’t stuttered once since we got here.

  “You’re going home,” he said. “You act like you’re part of us and you’re not!”

  “So? What’s so bad about it?”

  He stood still. “You’ve never let me cook you a fair meal, for one thing.”

  “I could stay that long.”

  “Of course, there will be plenty of money for Dierdre now,” Jenny Rose said. “You needn’t worry about her.”

  “How?” I said. “From Peg?”

  “Insurance. She had every sort of insurance. Always after Dierdre to get herself some. Dierdre never had two pence to rub together at the end of the month, though. She and I are alike, there. Dierdre will be well off now.”

  “Will she?”

  “Oh, yes. I think so.”

  “She won’t even have to live in Skibbereen, if she doesn’t want to,” Willy said.

  “Why wouldn’t she want to?” Jenny Rose said. She opened the pot and stirred. The enchanting smell of new brewing loose black tea filled the room. “What do you say we have a great fish hunt?” she suggested. “We’ll have a fine steep entry tariff. And the winner will donate the proceeds to go to a new roof.”

  “That’s a splendid idea! There are plenty of sportsmen from abroad here already for the season. Some of them have come back from last year. Everyone wants first shot at hooking that old devil, Tantalos. They’re all after him. Especially the Germans.”

  “Tantalos?” I said. “People know about him? Tourists?”

  “Sure. That huge salmon they’ve all seen and no one’s hooked. Not for at least three years. A course, Liam says he doesn’t really exist. But he does. He must be huge by now.”

  “Liam says too many scary things,” Seamus said.

  “What things?” I said.

  “Oh, you know, stories. Liam loves to get your hair on edge. That’s just the way he is.”

  “Well, them stories is too scary now.” Seamus buttoned and unbuttoned his top. “I told him to stop.”

  “He just likes to try them out on you, you big sucker.” Jenny Rose punched him playfully. “You know,” she went on, “there are a great lot of Bavarians holed up at Castle Park Marina in Kinsale.”

  “What do you want to do, go looking all the way in Kinsale?” Willy said. “Why, there must be twenty of them already here over on Sherkin Island alone. An
d another twenty on Clear Island.”

  “That’s true. And they’re here now.”

  “I could stretch a great sign from the O’Driscoll ruin—”

  “Mother of God!” Willy cried. “There you are! The O’Driscoll Clan Gathering is set to start tomorrow! They’ll all be here later today if they’re not here yet.”

  “We’ll take advantage of that lot as well!”

  “Why, there’s enough of them alone staying over in the Algiers already. They’d jump at it!” Willy Murphy fondly put an arm around Jenny Rose. He looked, glowingly, at her pretty face. “Isn’t she clever?” he asked me.

  “Clever enough to go to college,” I said.

  “Oh, please.” Jenny Rose made a miserable expression.

  “Well, you are,” I said, taking a bite of scone. “God,” I said, “this is the best scone I’ve ever eaten.”

  “Bridey makes them good,” Jenny Rose said.

  “They’re all good when you’re hungry,” Mrs. Wooly said. “Bernadette made a great fuss to get her in college up in Cork.”

  That was the second time I’d heard what a grand effort Bernadette had made. “I’m sure Bernadette had nothing to do with her getting in,” I said without thinking. “Anyone who knows anything about it would just have to look at her work and they’d be proud to have her.”

  “I don’t care,” Jenny Rose said, not stubbornly, just still in her own meaning. “I can’t sit in a class. I would go and work under a master, though. Like Lavecci. I could work for him. Just to be near him and watch what he does. I’d love that. But you know, he lives on an island off Spain.”

  Willy poured the tea.

  “Armond Lavecci?” I sat down uncomfortably. “I met him, years ago.”

  “Really?” Jenny Rose cried. “What was he like?”

  I thought for a moment. Megalomaniac? “Very temperamental,” I said out loud. “You know, crazed with his own opinion.”

  Jenny Rose drew in, nodding, eating each word.

  “But kind, I think. Very concentrated eyes, for all the brouhaha. Ambitious.”

  Seamus, bored, had pulled out a cardboard box of blocks. Crash. He tipped them onto the floor.

  “There’s a good boy,” Willy said. “Make us a lovely brown house, now.”

  Seamus furrowed his brow in concentration and went to work.