A shiver of sunlight lit across the room and Emma set about opening the wardrobe doors, a heavy, musty smell seeping around her. A jizz was on her to preserve the memory of a life that had been so brutally cut short. The wooden hangers were still in the wardrobe, so she took them down to arrange the dresses, covered in tiny, delicate, faded flowers. Their Peter Pan collars in simple white cotton dipped down from tight bodices to A-line skirts. Excitement pulsed through her that she might piece together a collage of the mother she never knew.
In the basement kitchen, she found cloths, a bucket and disinfectant under the sink, and an electric kettle she filled with water. When she got back to the bedroom, it was cold. The sound of the traffic down below creeping in the open window made the room seem a part of life once more. She switched on the kettle, standing and waiting for it to boil. She had always been so afraid of this room, afraid of its emptiness, the chill that curled around her ankles when she stepped in. A lonely, uncluttered room. Any time she had ventured in as a child she was so overcome by the fear of being found out that she could only stand and take in the blue wallpaper, garlands of flowers patched across the walls, before her back began to prickle with perspiration, making her bolt down the stairs.
Swirling the water into the bucket, some spilled on the floor, making patterns and channels through the decades of ingrained dirt. Squeezing out a steaming-hot cloth, she wiped across the centre of the dressing table, cutting a path through the grime set down over years of deliberate neglect. Circling across the dressing table, she worked until the dark hue of the walnut broke through and the ring-pull knobs on the drawers showed a dull gold. The mirror clean, she blew her breath on it and polished it with a dry cloth until it gleamed. Propping up the sash windows, she leaned out to splash water on the outside panes of glass, stretching to scrape away stubborn stains. Her arms aching, she retreated to the hall, stopping to rummage through some more boxes.
A large cardboard box, Jacobs Biscuits printed on the side, caught her eye. Dipping in, she took out a square blue gift box. A whiff of perfume snaked past her as she lifted a cobalt bottle from its satin bed. The label read Evening in Paris and the bottle with a silver top promised romance, though it might, after all this time, be just tar.
She had to put an effort into unscrewing the top, which was tight with age, then gingerly dabbed out a drop on her wrist. The sweet, woody aroma clouded around her. The perfume was brown-black, the smell strong and sweet. She sniffed again, the jasmine hinting at something exotic. There was a comfort about it, making her somehow feel satisfied.
She rummaged some more, taking out a wider box that looked like a gift set. The lid was stiff at first, but when she lifted it soft music flowed through the room. A small perfume bottle in the middle had been half used up, but the eau de cologne appeared not to have been touched and the midnight-blue tins of talcum powder were still heavy to hold.
When the music stopped, Emma pushed the lid down. She scooped up some more of her mother’s dresses and bundled the gift set into the crumple of silk, before tramping back up the stairs to the blue room. Carefully, she placed the boxes and the bottles on the dressing table. Sitting down, she thought she was sad, surrounding herself with the forgotten bits and pieces of another woman because she had nothing of her own and too much wounded pride to go home and even throw a few things in a case. Twisting hard on the perfume bottle, she used the dauber to stroke some more of the sweet scent with jasmine down the line of her neck. How many times had Grace done this, before going downstairs?
A sharp buzz of the doorbell interrupted Emma. She surveyed the room: the hint of perfume surfing the air, spots of sunlight lighting the faded blue wallpaper, the stool pushed back at an angle from the dressing table. Already it felt as if Grace had moved back in. Reluctantly, she went downstairs.
“I brought you a bit of hot lunch. I know you don’t want to be in that basement kitchen of yours trying to pull something together.” Angie Hannon was standing, a tray bunched with foil in her hand, a line of steam puffing across her face from a slight break in the silver cover. “I do the best coddle this side of the Liffey. I have never heard anyone say anything else.”
Angie’s face expectant, her eyes wide, Emma thought she looked like a child given free rein at the sweet counter.
“I did not realise it is gone lunchtime.”
Angie made to step into the hall, her face more relaxed now that her offering had been accepted. “Hope you don’t think me too forward. It is just . . .” She swung awkwardly from one foot to the other, unsure of what to say next.
Emma softened to the older woman, closing the hall door gently so that they were left standing looking at each other in the wide hall, surrounded by pillars of boxes.
“Don’t mind the mess. Would you like to stay a while?”
“I would love to and don’t mind any of that. Sure, it has to be wrong before it is right.”
Emma led the way to the upstairs drawing room. “What about a brandy?”
Angie beamed with pleasure. “Unusual at this time of day, but don’t let that stop us.”
Emma wiped the crystal glasses on the sideboard with a clean cloth and poured from another bottle she had found the previous night behind the judge’s law books. Angie stood by the drawing room windows, taking in the view as if it was her first time watching from the first floor of Parnell Square. She beckoned Emma to join her.
“You see that man sitting down there in the park? John McDermott goes there every day to remember his wife. She loved that garden, she did. They used to sit like lovers, holding hands. Poor chap sits now and talks to her in his head. Says it is better than going to a cold graveyard where you can’t even put up a chair to rest your bones. When they built that park, they never thought Maisie McDermott would be the one remembered the most.”
Emma handed her the brandy. Angie raised her glass, so that the liquid inside glinted in the sunshine streaming across the square.
“To you and this place.”
“I may have taken on too much. We’ll see.”
Emma opened up the coddle, dipping into the stew, attempting to fight the fatty meat and confine herself to the vegetables.
“A Dublin dinner in the bowl. It is my most popular dish when I do an evening meal special.”
“Have you always run the guesthouse?”
Angie’s face clouded over while Emma, a little distracted, scooped up a bigger spoonful of coddle. “Moved here about ten years ago. I will have to give you the recipe. I have never seen anyone tuck in with such gusto.”
Emma raised her brandy glass; they connected loudly, like two men with pints after a successful horse fair.
“Are you planning to stay, Emma, or are you just getting the place ready for sale?”
Emma hesitated. “I am not sure. I split up from my husband so there is not much to go back to in Australia.”
“Take time out here, lick your wounds, maybe find a man to keep you company for a while.”
“I rather think I’ve had enough of men at this stage.”
Angie giggled. “Never turn down a nice meal and good company, I always say.”
“How about yourself?”
“Forever on the lookout. Tell me, do you have a job to leave in Australia?”
Emma noticed the deliberate change in conversation, but let it go.
“Super exciting, working in a bank, but I am not sure there will be many opportunities here.”
“Once the will is sorted you may not have to worry too much in that regard. I know the judge had property all over the place.”
“You seem to know more about him than I do.”
Angie flustered and giggled. “It is not as if he opened his heart to me or anything, but I think I was somebody he trusted. He told me once he had an apartment in Paris. Funny thing was he did not know why and he had never even seen the inside of it. It was purely an investment, I suppose.”
“That sounds like my father.”
Angie g
ot up and walked back to the window. “Have you met Andrew yet?”
“Andrew?”
“Andrew Kelly. He was a good friend of your father.”
“He introduced himself at the funeral. He was kind.”
“He was very good to your father, stayed with him at the end.”
Emma got up and began to tidy away the glasses, her head down so Angie Hannon would not see the tears pinching at her eyelids. She fussed, straightening the pile of books on the table.
“You think it was bad of me, that I did not come earlier.”
Angie Hannon swung around. “I never said such a thing, never even thought it. Besides, it is not my place to make such a judgement. You were the only one who could make that call.”
Emma put the tray down on the sideboard and stood beside Angie, taking in the city.
“Andrew was a bit upset. He could not understand it,” Angie said quietly.
Two phone calls and one letter and still she had made no effort to book a flight, instead taking a day out on the Hawkesbury River, pretending he was not dying. Andrew Kelly wrote her two letters, the first two months before. He made it very clear, diagnosis and prognosis: six weeks maximum, and doctors, he said, were never out on their accuracy on such important pieces of information. Four weeks later, the second letter arrived: more formal, with the warning that she was in danger of making a decision she may later regret.
Did she regret it now? She didn’t know. When Andrew Kelly had introduced himself at the funeral, he made no reference to the correspondence and for that she was grateful. Neither did he ask why she had made the journey home when her father had passed away. She was not sure she had an answer to any of the questions he was too polite to ask.
Angie Hannon clapped her hands loudly, making Emma jump.
“I had better get along. I have a party of German businessmen staying with me tonight. I can’t imagine why they picked my little place when they could have had the best of any hotel. Either they are pocketing a lot of the expenses or the people they work for are cheapskates.” She reached over and put an arm across Emma’s shoulders. “I will give Andrew a ring. He will know exactly what to do with those law books.”
Emma nodded, walking Angie to the door.
Andrew Kelly had been so supportive at the funeral, beside her every step of the way. Before they closed the coffin at the funeral home, he had asked her if she wanted to spend a last few moments with her father alone.
She shook her head, so instead he waited until everybody had left and took his own private time with the dead judge, emerging many minutes later, his face grey with grief.
He was beside her too as she stood in the church the next day, when the whole of the Law Library queued up to shake her hand and offer sympathies for her loss. He introduced the judges to her, steering her clear of those who wanted to linger longer, causing a bulge in the queue, as words that meant nothing to her were enunciated with such earnest conviction.
He had also arranged a reception in the Gresham Hotel, so that after her father was buried they all went there, where plates of sandwiches covered a table and waitresses walked about with big kettles of tea. When she stole away to get some quiet, he followed her.
“Emma, would you like me to drop you home? You don’t have to stay until the bitter end, you know, everybody understands. Grief is a strange thing, it affects us all differently.”
“I don’t know any of these people. I never knew my father had so many friends.”
Andrew Kelly laughed. “I would not call them friends exactly, but a judge of his standing has a certain following. He probably would have had a lot to say in private about the majority of those here.”
He went out and stood with her on O’Connell Street, the wind whipping their ankles and forcing him to dig his hands into his trouser pockets.
“I can call a taxi for you or, if you like, I can walk you up to the house.” Dancing lightly from one foot to the other in an attempt to offset the chill, his cheeks and nose were blotched red.
“I can go on my own. I need to clear my head.”
“Are you sure?”
He looked relieved when she insisted she could walk on her own. She was surprised when he kissed her on the cheeks.
“I will stay on with this crowd and see the last one gone.”
They made no arrangement to meet again and she had wondered whether he was just a funeral buddy or somebody who would hover at her shoulder, as if he knew more of her father than she.
He did neither, sending a handwritten note the next day to say he had, as per the judge’s wishes, settled the bill with the Gresham Hotel and was forwarding the receipt to the solicitors handling her father’s estate. He was, he said, going to be out of the country for a few days but would, if she did not mind, call on her on his return. She liked the old-fashioned tenor of the letter, but believed his intention to call was more a polite comment than a direct intention.
Emma hoped she was wrong, because for some reason she found the company of this man comforting. That he was a friend of her father made it more surprising. She liked him; there was something reassuring about Andrew she could not quite put her finger on.
11
Our Lady’s Asylum, Knockavanagh, April 1954
Mandy was pulling a comb through her hair. “Curse these knots. I have to get them out.”
“Tell him to give you flowers,” Bertha said, and Mandy’s face reddened.
“How is it that that mad old bat always knows what’s going on?”
“You are not meeting somebody, are you?” said Grace.
Mandy gripped Grace’s arm and pulled her close. “What if I am?”
“Where? How could you?”
“In the kitchens. Why do you think I volunteered to do the bin work down in that dark basement?”
A scowl came across Grace’s face. “Who is he?”
Mandy pulled away. “I know what you are going to say: to be interested in a girl in an asylum.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“He is a man who likes the look of me and I like the look of him. What is wrong with that?”
“What do you plan on doing?”
Mandy threw her hands in the air. “Have tea and talk about the weather.”
“Mandy . . .”
“Don’t you miss it, Grace? The appreciative look of a man, the feel of his hand, his body.”
“But what if you get caught?”
Mandy jumped up. “Oh, oh, oh, oh, they might put me in the asylum, call me a lunatic.” She laughed out loud and one of the attendants looked their way. Mandy moved closer to Grace and whispered, “We are going to slip through the stile down at the holy well: there is nobody around there and there is a fair bit of cover.”
“Don’t go.”
“He says we can run away together once he works out a plan to get me out of here.”
She rummaged through her clothes.
“I am looking for something to match my pink blouse. Could I wear your red skirt?”
Grace pulled out the poplin gathered skirt she was given on her first week. “Are you sure about this?”
Mandy snatched the skirt and stepped into it. “What’s the worst that can happen? Hasn’t it happened already? You know why I am in this place?”
Grace shook her head.
“I went down by the river with a nice lad when the circus came to town and I ended up having a baby. They took the baby from me, I never saw her again, and my father drove me from the hospital to here. That was five years ago. I was just eighteen.”
Mandy shrugged her shoulders.
“If I am not back in time, will you sneak a slice of bread for me?”
“What do you mean, not back in time?”
“He is friendly with the night porter. I can come back a bit later. Cover for me, won’t you?”
“Dance till your feet give out,” Bertha shouted.
“Oh, shut up,” Mandy said.
She straightened her skirt
and did a twirl, laughing with excitement as the fabric spanned out.
“How do I look?”
“You look lovely.” Grace reached over and straightened the blouse collar. “Are you sure?”
Mandy giggled.
Grace stood in the middle of the ward, watching her friend as she reported to the nurses’ station to be accompanied down to the basement.
“For someone doing a dirty job you are very dolled up,” the head nurse said, as she unlocked the ward door and called an attendant to bring Mandy to the kitchen.
Grace sat on a straight chair by the window. From here she could see the curve of the driveway past the grassed lawn and the monkey puzzle tree in the middle, its thick branches stuck at angles, as if it was boxing the wind. A grey stone wall blotted the view of the road and planks of timber nailed across the gates obscured any other view.
The noon bus from Knockavanagh to Wicklow, only its roof visible, slid past. Somewhere down below, a member of staff kicked the ground and dragged on a cigarette. An awful loneliness seeped through Grace, so she took out her sewing kit and threaded a needle. A pile of linen handkerchiefs lay in the basket. She picked up one and began to hem it, concentrating on the neatness and the tightness of her stitches. If she got money for all the hankies she hemmed and the labels she sewed on saying “Made in Ireland”, she would be rich. Sometimes she worked too hard and her thumb chafed from pushing the needles through the double thickness of cloth. Her finger joints pained her because the hankies were fiddly and her back was sore because she had to bend over to get the best light near the end of the day.
Once she held a piece of linen back and left it stuffed in a ball in her pocket for days before she dared take it out, when there was quiet and the attendants had their feet up, gossiping. Flattening the fabric as best she could, with the blue thread she had pulled from the old blanket on her bed she stitched their initials, intertwined. Vikram and Grace: first the V and then the G, as they should be, husband and wife.
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