The Whitest Flower

by Brendan Graham

  She would be out of money until he sold her wines. If he failed to sell them, it would break her. It was unlikely she was benefiting from the same credit terms that she was now offering to him.

  ‘But fifty per cent of the profit, Mrs O’Malley? That’s high, very high.’

  He wondered how she would react to this. She was new in Boston, he reckoned. Probably having difficulty in getting started, wherever it was she was getting the wine from. But he liked her, and if he could beat her down some on the profit, then …

  ‘But you have no risk, Mr Peabody, none at all. I stand to lose everything, acting both as your supplier and your banker!’ she protested. Then added: ‘I’m afraid I’ll have to approach Endecott’s or Pendleton’s.’

  Oh, she was a right vixen, this Irish redhead. A right smart vixen – good to be in business with. Endecott’s? Pendleton’s? Why, she’d be lucky to get past the doorway with either of them – if they hadn’t already shown her the door! But she had some nerve all the same, for a woman and an outsider.

  ‘Done!’ he said, and grabbed her hand again. ‘Done. It’s a bargain, Mrs O’Malley!’

  ‘One other thing …’ she said, and he stopped pumping her hand.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You agree to pay me on a weekly basis for wine sold.’

  He nodded.

  ‘And,’ she went on, hardly acknowledging his agreement, ‘you agree to display my wines separate from the rest, in the entrance, on a special shelf-rack. My partner, Mr Lavelle, will come and construct it for you.’

  ‘That is two other things, Mrs O’Malley,’ he said, still holding her hand. It was soft, but firm-formed, especially her Mount of Venus.

  ‘No, Mr Peabody, it is one,’ she said, ignoring that he was again rubbing her hand. ‘The second thing I do for you, at no charge!’

  Jacob Peabody laughed. She was hard-nosed too, this fine-looking woman! But she had style and he wasn’t going to argue with her. After all, he had nothing to lose. His eyes twinkled.

  ‘Seeing as we are asking things of each other, I have one small request to ask of you, Mrs O’Malley …’

  ‘And what might that be, Mr Peabody?’ she asked, knowing that he was up to some mischief, some trick.

  ‘Only that you yourself – and not this partner of yours, this Lavelle – come weekly to see how sales of your wine are.’

  ‘Oh, I will, Mr Peabody! Don’t worry, I will!’

  48

  Ellen learned a lot from Jacob Peabody. He was as good as his word: the wines of the New England Wine Company were prominently displayed, and instead of going for a low profit margin he marked up the prices.

  ‘Those who will buy these wines have money a-plenty, and if we set them too cheaply they’ll not buy them,’ he explained to her. ‘They equate price with value.’

  By Christmas Eve, Peabody’s had sold seven and a half of the twelve crates of Bordeaux wines and five crates of the Burgundy. All but four bottles of the Hennessy Cognac had been sold. Peabody was pleased, as were Ellen and Lavelle.

  Lavelle’s shelves at Peabody’s had been replenished and Ellen had re-ordered more stock from Frontignac, Père et Fils. But the racks at the New England Wine Company were empty, and now they must wait until the heavy snows and the ice cleared to get more stock.

  Part of her hoped that the sales at Peabody’s would slow down after Christmas, as she did not want to fail to supply him so soon. The other part wanted the sales to keep up as the warehouse rent was a constant cost and did not reduce in line with a reduction in sales.

  Lavelle accompanied her to Midnight Mass. She couldn’t help but think that it was only last Christmas Eve when Pakenham had evicted them and tumbled their bothán to the ground. In one short, terrible year she had lost almost everything: Michael, Annie, her home, her children gone from her. And she had almost lost her own life. Now it looked as if things were beginning to turn for her at last.

  What did the year ahead hold? This night next year, if God spared her, what would her thoughts be of? God willing, Patrick and Katie and Mary would be with her to share them. She had decided she would go in the early summer for them, come what may. She would have to take the risk – she just couldn’t bear the thought of being away from them any longer than that. But summer was the earliest she could go. Things here would take a few more months to settle down, and both she and Lavelle needed to be here to work at it. Maybe they could, after a while, import directly from France – but she’d wait and see.

  She prepared a meal for Lavelle and herself on Christmas Day, and he arrived looking pleased with himself about something. He couldn’t wait until they’d completed the meal.

  ‘Ellen, I’ve brought something for you!’ he said, producing a package wrapped in pretty Christmas paper, tied with a golden string.

  She, too, was excited, her interest aroused.

  ‘Open it – go on, open it!’ he urged her.

  She did.

  ‘Oh, Lavelle – it’s beautiful, so beautiful!’ she said, as she dropped the wrapping to the ground, and threw back her hair so as to take the silken scarf he had gifted her. Like running water it was in her hands, it was so sheer. Shimmering golden water, shot through with shafts of emerald green.

  ‘The Mask in August!’ she said, in wonderment at its colours. ‘Thank you, Lavelle – you picked it with such care!’ Her hands fumbled with the excitement, trying to make the knot under her chin.

  ‘Here, let me!’ he offered, stepping forward, happy at her pleasure with his gift.

  She stood still. His fingers grazed the line of her neck. Instinctively she raised her head clear of them, not looking at him.

  ‘There,’ he said. ‘It’s fixed!’

  She smiled at him, in thanks.

  ‘Nollaig shona dhuit a Ellen!’ he said quietly, wishing her a happy Christmas.

  She opened her mouth to return the greeting, but, if she did, no words came out. Instead Lavelle’s mouth was against hers, swallowing her words, kissing her with all the pent-up emotion of months.

  She felt the bruise of his lips against hers, pushing them back, keeping them open, breathing into her.

  It took her a moment to recover, such was the hunger with which he sought her.

  ‘No, Lavelle! No, don’t!’ she said, breaking away.

  He stood back from her, shaking, and she saw something in his eyes which made her afraid.

  ‘D’you think I’m not human, Ellen? To be with you all this time and—’

  ‘Don’t say it, Lavelle!’ she interrupted him, her body unsure of its reaction. ‘It’ll be easier if we don’t say anything!’

  He looked at her. Was she made of stone instead of flesh and blood, this woman before him?

  He started to say, ‘I’m sorry …’ then changed his mind, because it wasn’t true. ‘I’m not sorry, Ellen. Not one bit sorry,’ he told her, his eyes flashing, and he turned and left, going out in the Christmas snows to his own place.

  Slowly, she undid the scarf, feeling Lavelle’s knot come away easily in her fingers. She looked at the scarf – its colours bringing her back across the ocean. It was beautiful indeed.

  She crushed it into one hand and put its silkiness against her cheek.

  ‘Oh, Michael, a stór,’ she whispered into its green and gold folds. ‘Help me.’

  Slowly, as he walked round the gardens, deep in December, David Moore thought that it was indeed the dimming of a black, black year.

  Black for the country of Ireland.

  Black for its dead, its starving, its diseased, its homeless.

  Black for him – no cure found – only his love lost.

  Black for his dear, dear, Isabella.

  As he walked the route he and Isabella had walked for the last time some months previously, he heard footsteps fall in with his own.

  Canon Prufrock said nothing for a while, and the curator was really not of a humour to be welcoming company. So they walked awhile in silence, each with his own thoughts.
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  Eventually the canon spoke, gently, a slight awkwardness in his voice: ‘David, dear, dear friend …’

  Moore kept his eyes on the path. During Isabella’s last weeks the canon had visited her bedside every day, showing no fear of catching the dreaded typhus himself. The old man would just sit and be silent with her. She, even when falling in and out of the clutches of the fever, seemed to know when he was there, and her face would take on a glow of serenity. The curator knew Isabella had an unfailing admiration, even a tenderness, for her pastor. She understood and accepted the old cleric in a way Moore never could. ‘He is not of this world. He is a true man of God, David,’ she would say.

  ‘I had a great tenderness for dear Isabella,’ the canon’s words broke in on Moore’s thoughts. ‘In the darkest of hours, with the poor and the needy, she was as a beacon of light … smiling, uncomplaining, no thought for herself … only for those more wanting,’ the canon said haltingly.

  Moore nodded, lost in the images dragged up by the old man’s words.

  ‘Many is the time I was obliged, reluctantly, to send her away, or she would have striven in good deeds from dawn to dusk. And she would remonstrate with me’ – his voice picked up some of Isabella’s spiritedness – ‘“Canon,” she would say, “Canon, will this sick child rest while I rest? Will this mother, who has lost two of her children, sleep while I sleep? Will these two orphaned urchins eat while I eat? The answer, in each occasion, is no! How then can my soul be at peace, if I leave them not eased in their suffering?”’

  The old man looked at Moore.

  ‘This was your Isabella, dear friend, moved by the spirit – tireless in God’s work.’

  ‘Thank you, Canon, thank you most kindly,’ Moore whispered in reply.

  ‘The wisteria climbs to the heavens above the Chain Tent? The stridulation of the Sigara dorsalis rises from beneath the water of the Pond? These are His mysterious ways. We know not the answers. Know not why, sometimes, He picks His fairest flowers the first – gathering them homewards, to Himself, for All Eternity …’

  Moore was grateful for the canon’s words, and spoke for the first time of his feelings for Isabella: ‘She was a saint in all things – a source of wonder. Always within her only sunny humours, and a heart unquenching in its affection … I am sorely grieved to be without her.’

  They had come to the Jenkinstown Rose and the curator stopped walking.

  ‘Of all, this was her favourite spot in the gardens.’ Moore pointed to the lone rose ahead.

  ‘Ah, yes, Rosa chinensis,’ said the canon. ‘Oft I heard her sing that sweet tune, “The Last Rose of Summer”, to the dead and the dying …’ Again, the old man’s voice trailed off, remembering.

  They stood in front of the rose, still alive, still lingering, long past summer. Head more bent now, petals more faded, browning towards the edges. Tired of the long, hard year. No soft hand now to bring back the blush of summer.

  The curator and the canon stood silently in its presence, each remembering her who once sang its beauty. Each remembering the last, sweet rose of Black Forty-Seven.

  The curator’s thoughts were broken by a low sound from beside him. He listened. The canon was intoning something – probably the De Profundis, or some other prayer for the dead. A shiver passed over Moore, as he realized what it was Prufrock was saying … singing:

  ’Tis The Last Rose of Summer,

  Left blooming alone;

  All her lovely companions

  Are faded and gone …

  The phrasing was the same. The canon must have learned it from listening to Isabella. The old man talk-whispered the song through:

  … Since the lovely are sleeping,

  Go, sleep thou with them …

  The curator stole a look at him. He detected a quiver in the clergyman’s lips. He looked again. This time, a tear descended the old man’s cheek. Prufrock was weeping as he sang his song for the curator’s dead wife. Moore was deeply moved – it was probably the nearest the canon had ever let himself come to feelings of love.

  Canon Prufrock continued his love song, the words now becoming more broken:

  When true hearts lie wither’d,

  And fond ones are flown,

  Oh! … Who … would … inhabit …

  This … bleak … world … alone?

  Moore was overcome by a genuine depth of feeling for the old man. He waited until the last traces of Prufrock’s song had faded into the early eventide of the gardens. Then, without looking up, he gently said, ‘Canon, thank you for that – it brings such fond, fond, memories.’

  Prufrock merely nodded, keeping his gaze fixed on the rose – Isabella’s rose.

  The curator waited a moment before tentatively, and with great kindness, enquiring, ‘And … Canon, would you do me the great honour in continuing the tradition dear Isabella commenced, and joining us … I mean, me … over the Christmas … for a glass of port?’

  The canon, too, waited a moment before replying. ‘Thank you, my dear friend … most kind of you … but I think not … not without, eh …’ he corrected himself: ‘not this Christmas.’

  49

  Over the next few months Ellen and Lavelle worked hard and late, side by side, building up the New England Wine Importing Company. Neither mentioned the events of Christmas Eve.

  While Lavelle looked after the shipping, warehousing and deliveries, she looked after the ordering and her one customer, Jacob Peabody, who had now opened a second store. And what a job that was – on every front!

  As she had suspected, trade quietened somewhat for the few weeks after Christmas. But after La Bríde in February, it began to pick up again.

  Peabody was demanding. He wanted replacement stock immediately; harangued her over the prices she was paying to Frontignac, Père et Fils arguing that she should be receiving a discounted price from them because of the growing volume of business; and wanted to hold her hand at every opportunity. Neither was he as old as his white hair implied, nor as he liked to pretend. She put him at ‘not yet the three score’, and a lively fifty-something he was too! She imagined he was probably flirtatious with all women of his acquaintance – as long as they were young and pretty – but she suspected that he had a real notion of her, as well.

  Peabody often asked after Lavelle, calling him ‘that young helper of yours’ to annoy her though he knew perfectly well that Lavelle was her partner in the business. ‘He’ll never amount to anything, that young helper of yours. Too busy making doe’s eyes at the boss,’ he said to her one day.

  Most of the time she ignored him, laughed it off, but once in a while she would rise to him, retorting: ‘Mr Lavelle is not my helper, nor am I his boss.’

  Then Peabody would catch hold of her hand and clasp it mockingly over his heart, saying, ‘Better to be an old man’s sweetheart than a young man’s slave. Marry me, Ellen!’

  ‘Ah, get away with you, Jacob, and stop that old mollycoddling talk. You wouldn’t share your fortune with any woman. Pay up what you owe me!’

  And he did. He always paid her on time.

  As the flow of cash improved, so were they now able to bring in some ports and a selection of the finer whites from Burgundy. It was better this way: the gold of the Ngarrindjeri had been put to good use. Now, even though she had little left of the original money, at least she had something that was starting to build up, slow and all as it was. She didn’t want them to do it too fast. But when she came back she would have to try and get new customers. Supplying Peabody’s two stores was fine, and he was a good customer, but …

  ‘France will have to wait until I get back from Ireland,’ she said to Lavelle, thinking that was another thing to be done. ‘And as for the Barossa wines …’ she looked at him. ‘Well, that’s a further while off.’

  These days her heart was beating faster at the prospect of going home, and seeing her beloved children at last. Sometimes, an irrational fear would grip her that maybe, with all she had been through, they would not re
cognize her. Or worse still, be alienated from her, unable to forgive her for abandoning them.

  She rehearsed it all in her mind. Once there she’d slip in quietly, visit the Crucán, find Michael’s leac and pray a while over it. Then she’d go by Maamtrasna, stand on the hearth in Biddy’s house, if they were still in it, and tell them of Roberteen. They’d be consoled to know that she had sat with him at the last – that he had been with one of their own – and that he got a decent burial, in a proper graveyard. She wouldn’t tell them that it was a bás gan sagart – a death without a priest.

  And Sheela-na-Sheeoga – was she still alive? She’d have to see her, tell her about Annie. Ask her about the riddle of ‘the whitest flower’. She needed to know if her going back to Ireland would be the solving of it at last – the crushing of ‘the blackest flower’, whatever the old woman had meant by that.

  She wondered too about Father O’Brien. Still beyond in Clonbur, coming out to Finny on his horse? Or, like Reverend Bonney, maybe taken with one of the famine diseases. She had forgiven him for bringing Michael to the Westport Workhouse. The priest had done what he thought was right. Once or twice she had been tempted to write to him, to ask about the children. But she had been afraid to, in case it got out by accident where she was. It was unlikely she’d see him when she went back – it would delay her too much.

  She’d do all of that first, before she went to Tourmakeady for the children. That way, once she had them, she could flee Ireland quickly in case there was trouble with Pakenham, or, even worse, with the constabulary.

  She squeezed the outside of her handbag. There she felt the small hard object that Jacob Peabody had drawn from under the counter one day and slipped into her bag. He had stood close to her, as he always did, and taken her hand.

  ‘I want you to come back safely to old Jacob,’ he had said, smiling at her – for a change, there was no hint of lechery. ‘Take “Dr Peabody” with you, and you’ll have good health in the old country!’