“What’s the weather today?” she asked.
“Prepare for sunshine,” I said.
“Is that true?”
“I never think about it, to be honest with ya.” I was about to pick up the breakfast tray again when a yell came from the bathroom.
“Say you. Not ya if you please!”
Mrs. Axe laughed out loud.
Miss Sheridan’s voice bellowed out again from the bathroom. “Gabriel has five sisters and three brothers but he’s as much of an orphan as I am if you ask me!”
“Is that so?” Mrs. Axe asked as she turned around as if to get a better look at me.
“Can’t you tell by looking at him, Ruth?”
Feeling a bit tortured, I turned with the breakfast tray and was about to leave the room when Miss Sheridan came out of the bathroom.
“Do you know how Gabriel got the job here?”
“No.”
I was now more embarrassed than ever before.
“He was walking by the hotel one day when he smelled the food cooking. He asked the hall porter if he could work here. Can you imagine? What was it? Chicken? Roast beef? He was drawn in because of the odour that was pouring out onto the street. He smelled the food cooking and his nose brought him in to ask for a job! It must have been coming up from the grate on Kildare Street. I’ve often walked into the whiffs myself.”
“Is that true, Gabriel?” Mrs. Axe asked me, holding back a laugh.
“Didn’t you tell me you’d never had chicken in your house, Gabriel?” said Miss Sheridan.
“I did.”
Mrs. Axe laughed a bit louder. “You smelled the chicken and you got the job?”
“Ah, somethin’ like that, ma’am.”
“If he doesn’t watch out he’ll end up like half of the poor fellows who walk around Dublin with weak legs and flat feet,” Miss Sheridan said.
“Who are you talking about, Maggie?” Mrs. Axe asked.
“The waiters who work in this hotel! Haven’t you seen them?”
“I haven’t noticed. They appear to be very nice.”
“Gosh, I wish I could say they were as nice as some of the waiters I’ve met in other parts of the world.”
“You only say that because they’re Irish and you’re Irish, Maggie.”
“I only say it because a lot of them are Dubliners who make fun of everyone they meet. They judge and complain as if they’re paying their own wages. Country people are not as fast with the gab if you ask me. God almighty, they don’t know how well off they are here! Years ago half the servant girls who worked in Dublin came up from the countryside. They were treated so harshly many of them became nuns and spent the rest of their lives in a convent. More than a few entered the convent for other reasons as well. Maybe it was better than marrying a –” She stopped and looked at me. “I take that back. I’m only joking. They were all unfortunate. Gabriel, what do we call the Dubliners? What are they called by country people like myself from Castlebar, County Mayo?”
“Jackeens,” I answered.
“Jackeens is right. That’s the name!” She laughed as if she was remembering something very personal. “Jackeens!” she said again, only louder as if to underline the word. “They got the name because during the Troubles most Dubliners didn’t want to break with the English Crown. The English flag, the Union Jack as it is called, was a comfortable symbol for the Dublin people. Being wrapped in the Union Jack was important in those days. It might have been, if you ask me. It might have been. Ruth, this lad here, his own father signed up with the English army when he was still wet behind the ears and the same age. Off he went to France and nearly had his head blown off as well as a few other things. But what was he to do at the time? I don’t know and I suppose I’ll never know. Do you know what I’m attempting to say, Ruth, my dear and beloved friend, American that you are?”
Mrs. Axe clapped her hands as if applauding Maggie’s performance. “Yes! Yes! Maggie from Mayo! You might have a point but if I don’t eat soon you might have to bury me in this country.”
Both women laughed out loud and I sensed the time had at last come for me to leave the room. I firmly gripped the breakfast tray, turned and walked out the door.
* * *
The next morning when I came to retrieve Maggie’s breakfast tray I discovered she wasn’t in her room. It was the first time she had not been there when I came back to collect the tray. As on every other morning, the light was still on in the bathroom and an opera of some sort was playing on her record player. The breakfast tray was on the side table near the window and only half the breakfast was eaten. I was half-tempted to look under the bed in case Maggie had gone looking for something she might have dropped. Maybe by hiding under the bed, I thought to myself, she is playing a part from one of the operas she has appeared in when she was younger. After instantly dismissing my errant imagination, I decided to grab the tray and leave the room. As I walked towards the door it opened in front of me. I lost my balance and the contents of the breakfast tray went crashing to the floor.
As I instinctively bent down to gather the items, I was immediately assisted by Maggie.
“A good thing I’m not hungry this morning, isn’t it?” she said as she placed the teapot on the tray.
I didn’t have a chance to apologise before Fifth Floor Mary came rushing to the door. “Are ye all right there?” she said as she got down on her hands and knees and began wiping everything with a large hand-towel.
As Mary was tidying up the mess Maggie put her hand to her shoulder. “Go back to Kerry, Mary! Everything’s fine! Come back later when I’m out for the day.”
Mary secured her glasses on her nose and departed in a hurry.
As I was about to leave with the tray, Maggie called to me. “I left to go to early Mass this morning. The priest, who is a close friend of mine, was saying his last Mass here. He’s off to America. A parish in New Jersey! I don’t go to church as often I should. I confess to him every so often and he’s been generous with absolution. Should you ever leave Ireland, Gabriel, make sure you remember everything the Holy Church taught you.” She then went to her record player and turned it off. “I leave this thing on most of time so that Mary from Kerry doesn’t come in and rummage about in my things.”
I took that as a signal to leave the room.
* * *
On Grafton Street outside Bewley’s coffee shop I saw her reflection in the window. A big black hat with a feather sticking out of it appeared and descended on the window like a large bird coming out of the sky. She was standing behind me, holding the arm of another woman. I felt a mixture of shock and embarrassment and wondered if she’d recognise me out of my waiter’s outfit. Without the breakfast tray I felt naked. I closed my eyes and hoped she hadn’t seen me. I didn’t know what to say or do or which way to turn. I bent my head down and tried to sneak away. As I stepped away from the other onlookers who were also admiring the big coffee machine and the man in white making the coffee, I heard my name.
“Gabriel!” Her voice was clear and unmistakable.
I was spotted. It was embarrassing. I turned around to face Miss Sheridan and Mrs. Axe. “Goodness gracious!” she said, looking pleasantly surprised.
“Pleased to meet you again, Gabriel,” Mrs. Axe said with an even broader smile.
Both women seemed to be enjoying their time on Grafton Street.
“Your day off?” Mrs. Axe asked me.
“Yes, ma’am. I’m off every second Saturday.”
“That’s why we had cold tea and toast this morning, Ruth,” Margaret Sheridan said with half a laugh in her voice.
“Mine wasn’t so bad,” Mrs. Axe said. “You live around here, Gabriel?” she added with the curiosity of a tourist.
“About three miles away,” I said.
“He lives up near Kilmainham Gaol,” Miss Sheridan said.
“Kilmainham Gaol?”
“Now I only said he lives near it. Not in it!”
“I’m sure he do
esn’t live in it!” Mrs. Axe said, laughing almost out loud.
“It was where they put the patriots and tortured and killed them,” Miss Sheridan volunteered.
As I turned to move away from Bewley’s window, Miss Sheridan put her hand to my jacket collar. “Doesn’t your poor mother have a needle and thread?” she asked, as she looked me over.
“It’s just a bit worn,” Mrs. Axe said, doing her best to hold back a laugh. “He looks fine if you ask me!”
Miss Sheridan wouldn’t let go. “My God, how can you possibly walk straight in those shoes?” she asked me, tapping the toe of my foot with hers.
I wanted to fall back into Bewley’s window and be ground up with the coffee beans that were rolling about in the grinder.
“That shirt you’re wearing must have belonged to your grandfather, Gabriel. Am I right about that?”
The shirt I was wearing had belonged to someone but I didn’t know who. Most likely it had a few owners before me. My mother picked it up in the Iveagh market on Francis Street a week earlier. The Iveagh market opposite the Tivo cinema was a huge open arena where, among other things, the clothes from Dublin’s dead were sold third hand. Sometimes the smell of death lingered in the clothing.
“Goodbye, ma’am,” I said and turned to go.
But as I walked on the women walked with me.
The doors of the shops on Grafton Street were beautifully painted and the displays in the windows offered glimpses into a world of fantasy without charging admission. To be noticed on Grafton Street was almost as important as being seen at Mass on a Sunday morning. The street smelled expensive. The latest fashions – clothes, jewellery and shoes – were on display in the shop windows. Some of the shops had uniformed doormen who were quick to open the doors when customers were entering or exiting the premises. They also signalled to anyone who looked poor to keep walking.
About a minute or two later Miss Sheridan and Mrs. Axe stopped to look in the window of a men’s clothing store.
“Go inside,” Mrs. Axe said.
I didn’t know what she meant.
“Go!” Miss Sheridan said as she pushed me towards the interior of the shop.
I had never been in such a place.
They went about the task of outfitting me from head to toe. Rack after rack of clothing was brought in from the back room of the shop to find what Miss Sheridan and Mrs. Axe thought suited me. After about forty-five minutes of testing and fitting, standing and sitting, I was transformed from what can only be described as a tattered scarecrow into a person who might have been born with a silver spoon in his mouth. My feet were measured for new shoes and my legs were fitted to the trousers I was being poured into. Something about the smell of new clothes and the way they looked and felt on me made me forget where I was. Had the clothes been a set of wings I couldn’t have felt any higher.
After stumbling over at least six ways of saying thank-you, I said goodbye to Mrs. Axe and Margaret Sheridan. With my old clothes in a large brown-paper bag, I walked further down Grafton Street until I came to the entrance of Trinity College – the old bastion of education that had been planted there four hundred years ago. It was a place where Catholics didn’t go. I stopped and looked at the students entering and exiting the place. For years I’d wondered what was inside the gates of the place. I had always been afraid to even look in. I had heard or read that the Protestant Queen Elizabeth the First of England built it and only rich Protestants were allowed to go there and it was no place for Catholics. The Catholic Church wouldn’t allow any Catholic to go there anyway. If you were a working-class Catholic you weren’t supposed to even notice it when you walked by. It was one of those strange things that we were brought up with. “Don’t look at that big Protestant hole when you’re taking the bus at College Green.” It was very much like a sin. Whatever it was, it had only to do with Protestants – off limits to Catholics for so long most didn’t believe it actually existed even though it was the most obvious building in all of Dublin. Trinity College was a world within a world. Word was that the fellas who were in there wore grey suits with white collars. Protestant ministers, who drank, smoked and were married as well. I stopped at the entrance with my new suit and walked in. While walking past a wastepaper basket I dropped the brown-paper bag with my old clothes into it. Nobody paid any attention to me. I walked around the yard holding my new overcoat on my arm. I was in the middle of the place related to some part of the Protestant Hell. I didn’t see anyone walking about with cloven feet. Young people wearing coloured scarves and expensive clothes were dashing every which way. Some were riding bicycles. Someone asked me where the library and the science department were. I looked at two girls walking across the yard and I noticed them looking back at me. I wanted to talk to them but I was afraid they’d discover me. I walked all around the campus until I was back again at the front gate. I felt so good I decided to walk home and half of Dublin, if they wanted to, could look at me in my new clothes.
I liked my new suit so much I sometimes slept in it. One day, after holding on to it as if it was my skin, I decided not to wear it to work. Afterwards when I went looking for it in the bedroom my mother told me she had pawned it and bought food to feed the rest of the family for a week. Sitting at the dinner table that night I watched the rest of my family chewing away on boiled bacon and cabbage. When the plates were licked clean my father apologised to me and thanked me for the meal. My mother promised to get the suit out of the pawnshop before my seventeenth birthday. I knew she wouldn’t be able to afford it if I lived to be ninety. I assured her I’d make enough money in the Shelbourne to redeem the suit myself.
And then everything changed.
Two weeks later Miss Sheridan entered the tea lounge. She walked to the table next to the big window, sat down and within a second called to me. I crossed the room and stood in front of her.
“Did you say anything to your mother or father about what we discussed?” she asked.
“I mentioned it.”
“What did they say?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Nobody paid any attention. That’s the way it is in my house.”
Miss Sheridan turned her head towards the window and then looked back at me. “Sit and never mind about your job. I’ll talk to the manager. Sit.”
I sat down on the chair in front of her.
“I don’t suppose you’ve ever been to Mayo?” Her voice became sad and soft when she mentioned her home county. “I remember when I first went to London. You’ve never been there, have you?”
“No, ma’am.”
“When I was younger I spent a lot of time in London. Covent Garden.”
The way I heard it was ‘Convent Garden’.
“That’s a magnificent –” She paused. “You wouldn’t know much about Covent Garden, would you?”
“No, ma’am.”
“I didn’t think you would. How could you?”
“You were in a convent for nuns?”
Miss Sheridan laughed. “Heavens no! Very few nuns there! Very few! Actually there is an opera about nuns. The Carmelites! Les Dialogues des Carmelites! A young girl who wants to escape the reality of death joins a convent in France. Of course there’s no escaping that. Heaven knows I’ve identified with that character more than once. Young people shouldn’t have to be thinking about such things.” She stopped again and took a deep breath. I got the feeling she had wandered into talking about something she wasn’t comfortable with.
At the same time Quinn came back from his break. He saw me sitting and called out, “Walsh? Get up out a that!” He then approached me. “What’re ya sittin’ there for?” he asked in disbelief. “You’re still workin’.”
Miss Sheridan snapped her fingers at him. “Get me a pot of tea, please,” she said in very firm voice, more to get rid of him than anything else.
Quinn made an about-face and retreated to the kitchen.
Miss Sheridan then handed me a thick enve
lope. “Have your mother and father look all this over and get back to me.”
I took the papers from her and attempted to stand up.
“Sit!”
I sat down again.
“Is everything clear to you now? You know about getting your passport and all that other paper stuff, don’t you?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Don’t do anything foolish now. For Heaven’s sakes please don’t do anything that would embarrass me. I’ve asked Ruth to do this favour. I think you’ll be pleased. And tell your mother not to worry.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Quinn arrived with the tea.
Miss Sheridan put her hand to the teapot. “Oh, I meant to ask you for toast as well. Would you get some for me, please?”
Quinn withdrew to the kitchen. Miss Sheridan laughed out loud.
“When you go home inform your parents again about all this,” she said to me.
She poured her tea and began to drink. Then Quinn arrived with the order of toast. He also put the bill in front of her.
She picked the bill up and looked it over. “Put this on my account, would you? And don’t ask me to sign for it. You know who I am. God knows I’ve been here often enough to own the place.”
Quinn walked away with bill in hand.
Ignoring the toast, Miss Sheridan took a few more sips of tea.
“I’ll talk to you in the morning,” she then said.
She stood up and walked away.
My eyes were still on her as she left the room.
Quinn approached me. “What was goin’ on there? Sittin’ down havin’ tea with a customer? You’ll be sacked.”
I remained seated and picked up the envelope Miss Sheridan had given me.
“What’s in that?” Quinn asked me.
I looked inside the envelope. I knew my parents wouldn’t be able to make head or tail of the documents inside.
“I think I’m going to be leavin’ this job,” I said.
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