The Rising of Bella Casey

by Mary Morrissy

Then Bella understood the finality of this summons.

  ‘And in the case of Isaac and Jack, to look out for them especially for they will not have the benefit of a father, as you have had.’

  He stopped to take breath and in the noisy silence of him drawing in enough air to continue, Tom had crumpled to his knees at the side of the bed weeping with a terrible clamour in big manly croaks. A lump was blossoming in Bella’s throat. She gripped the iron foot of the bed and bit down on her lip to stop it trembling.

  ‘See to it, Bella,’ Pappie went on, for it was a struggle for him to speak and he was determined to get to the end of his piece, ‘that Jack gets to school every day. We don’t want him ending up as a dunce. I know I can’t depend on this pair of blackguards in that regard.’

  That really set Tom off. So much so that Mother had to hurry into the room and steer him away.

  ‘Come here,’ Pappie said then to Bella, almost in a whisper.

  He reached out his waxen hand.

  ‘You’re a good girl, Bella, and you’ve made your father very proud.’

  And then she could hold her tears no longer. Out they came in a childish spurt and she was all set to confess about Reverend Leeper for she knew she was not worthy of his blessing. But she stopped herself; it would have broken his heart to know that she had been besmirched even in the smallest way. Better that he go ignorant in his pride, firm in the knowledge that she was a good and faithful daughter. If he had lived, perhaps all manner of things would have been different. But without him, there was no one to think the best of her, and so she began to fall in her own estimation.

  A FINE SILK SHAWL

  Pappie was buried on a tender day in September with some sun, a little blustery wind and a pale sky filled with racing cloud. It was a fine funeral with three carriages, twenty-six cabs and six side-cars. The undertaker and his assistant wore silver-buttoned long coats of Prussian blue and black top hats, the horses – one black, one roan – were kitted out in embroidered head-dresses with black plumes.

  Once inside the gates of Mount Jerome, Bella and Mother alighted from the carriage. The wide avenue petered out into narrow pathways between the green-furred gravestones, and they made their way on foot to the spot where Pappie would be buried. Mick and Tom and two men from the Mission shouldered the coffin along with two of the hearsemen. It tilted to one side on account of Mick being smaller than the others, Bella noticed, but she countered this with the thought that Pappie would have been proud of the boys at that moment for they looked like the men he had wanted them to be, stiff and serious in their good suits, and sober. But as soon as the Canon had said his piece – dust to dust, the way we all go in the end – and the gravediggers had begun to shovel the clods of earth over the coffin, she knew her brothers’ minds would turn towards diversion.

  It came in the person of the Bugler Beaver, whom Bella spied once the coffin was lowered, moving through the crowd in his gay scarlets.

  ‘Sorry for your trouble, Miss Casey,’ he said and bowed a little like a real gentleman.

  He took her gloved hand in both of his. He, too, was wearing gloves – spotless white ones – and even though their flesh did not meet, Bella felt a certain intent in his touch. This much she had learned. The recognition came as a soft shock; she could no longer count herself innocent.

  ‘What’s that fella doing here?’ Mother said sotto voce as the Bugler turned away.

  ‘To pay his respects to Pappie,’ Bella whispered harshly.

  ‘Sure, he never even met your father,’ Mother said.

  Mick collared his military friend, clapping an arm across his gold-encrusted shoulders and muttered urgently. ‘What about a jar with Tom and myself in The Bleeding Horse?’

  ‘Now now, son,’ Mother said.

  Mick scowled. He took the Bugler aside and there was some urgent whisperings between them, some male hugger-mugger afoot.

  ‘Bella?’ Mother called.

  She was climbing into the carriage and settling herself on the seat with Jack on her lap.

  Presently Mick joined them, lumbering aboard reluctantly and Tom followed him. The carriage took off with an enormous lurch. Through the window, Bella watched as the figure of Corporal Beaver, standing alone by the graveside, receded from view. The other mourners had scattered so her last sight of Pappie was of the Bugler, standing guard at the open grave.

  It was a desolate sensation returning home to the darkened rooms with the blinds down, the clocks stopped. It seemed to Bella as if the house held its breath, the floorboards waiting for Pappie’s tread. Only his belongings were still in residence – his jacket hanging on the hook of the parlour door; his books by the bedside. He had got only half-way through Trollope’s The Way We Live Now, she noticed, thinking how poignant that he would never know now how the tale finished. His Bible lay on the counterpane. She opened it and riffled through its pages. In the inside back cover he had inscribed the marks from her report cards at the College. Her 52 out of 60 for penmanship, her 56 for spelling, even her poor 28 for grammar. It made her heart seize and she shut the good book quickly so as not to be reminded. Of his absence; of her own promise.

  She set to and made an early tea. Mrs Tancred, next door, had left some eggs and they sat down to eat in a silence as solemn as the Last Supper, broken only by Isaac who remarked there wasn’t much eating in an egg, not for a man. He was all of twelve but he had developed notions of himself, particularly with his father gone. They were the only words exchanged between them. Bella was glad of it – it seemed an offence to chatter. When they had finished and Bella was stacking the plates, Jack came up to her and nuzzled into her side.

  ‘When is me Da coming home?’

  Of late, being distracted, Mother had let him pal around with that Connor boy, a Catholic of decidedly rough manners who called his own father just plain Da.

  ‘Who’s looking after me Da?’ he persisted. ‘Why aren’t you up in the room looking after me Da?’

  She hated hearing Pappie being reduced to the level of Mr Connor, a common labourer.

  ‘Oh Jack, will you stop it before you give us all a headache,’ she snapped at him.

  ‘Bella!’ Mother said and whisked the child on to her lap.

  ‘He’s only making us all feel mournful with his lonesome whingeing,’ Bella said trying to justify being short with him.

  They each lapsed into their own thoughts after that. Jack fell into a drowsy sleep; Mick lit up his pipe; Tom read the newspaper. Then somewhere in the distance a church bell chimed the seventh hour. Mick and Tom hauled themselves out of their stupor and donned their greatcoats.

  ‘We’re off for a quick drink,’ Mick announced for both of them. That’s the way it was with those two. Mick rowed out and Tom got carried in his wake. He halted at the door. ‘A word outside, Bella, if you please.’

  She followed them out into the hall.

  ‘I have something for you, Bella,’ he said, ‘though I’m not sure it’s at all suitable.’

  ‘What? What do you mean?’

  ‘I have a little billay do for you,’ he said, plucking a letter from his inside pocket. ‘From an admirer.’

  She blanched. The Reverend, she thought immediately. Had it come to this that he could worm his way into the middle of their grieving? Then she shook herself; it couldn’t be. Could it?

  ‘What admirer?’ she asked, making to snatch the note from his hand. Mick winked at her and feinted a few times.

  ‘Ah, Bella,’ he taunted as the pair of them danced around the letter, ‘don’t you know that a certain bugler is sweet on you?’

  Fear gave way to relief.

  ‘Give it over here,’ she cried, ‘and quit your teasing.’

  ‘What’s going on out there?’ Mother called out.

  ‘Give it over,’ she hissed, ‘before we draw Mother down upon us.’

  Mick surrendered the letter.

  ‘You’ll have to open it straight away – he’ll be wanting an answer.’

&nb
sp; She fixed in her mind the picture of the Bugler Beaver in the graveyard in his jaunty regimentals, standing guard beside Pappie.

  ‘Bella?’ Mother called.

  ‘You can tell Corporal Beaver, the answer’s yes,’ she said though she did not even know the question.

  She shut the door behind the boys and leaned up against it, still holding the unopened letter. Bella was written on the outside (no more Miss Casey, she noticed) in a steady, robust hand with no curlicues, the hand of a practical man. It wasn’t cramped like a clerk’s or illegible like a doctor’s. It could have been the script of a teacher so well-modulated was it, but it had a confident flair, an impatient progress, the letters sloping forward as if each one was rushing to embrace the next. She opened the envelope and unfolded the note.

  ‘Dear Bella,’ it read. ‘Slip out if you can. Am having a jar with Mick and Tom in Nagle’s but can make my excuses and meet you at the Rotunda Rooms at 9. Say you’ll come. Nick.’

  There wasn’t much to it, though quite what she had been expecting she couldn’t rightly say. It sounded terse, a command rather than a request. But those last words – say you’ll come – betrayed an urgency that twinned with her own. Was this the way out?

  She sat in the parlour till going on half past eight. Mrs Tancred was in residence and looked like she might stay the whole night.

  ‘Mother,’ she said quietly, using words she’d been rehearsing for over two hours. ‘I’m going to slip out for a breath of fresh air before it gets dark. Maybe take a turn by the canal.’

  Before she had a chance to reply, she turned to Mrs Tancred and used her sweetest tone. ‘Would you sit with my mother a while longer, Mrs Tancred, for I wouldn’t want her to be alone on this of all nights.’

  ‘Gladly, Bella, I’d be happy to.’ She beamed at Bella munificently for Mrs Tancred was the kind of woman who was never happier than when she was being considered as indispensable in the affairs of others.

  ‘My head is throbbing,’ Bella said by way of explanation, ‘after the exigencies of the day.’

  ‘I know, I know, Bella, it’s been a long day for all of us,’ Mrs Tancred said, clutching her own temples in sympathy. ‘Sure your mother is dead on her feet.’

  Mother sat with her head bowed. Bella was not even sure if she was awake or asleep.

  ‘Is that alright with you, Mother?’

  Mother made no reply. She wouldn’t say anything derogatory in front of a neighbour. As Bella put on her hat and threw a shawl over her shoulders, she added, ‘I won’t be long, Mother.’

  ‘Oh, please yourself, Madam,’ Mother replied tartly, ‘for you do always.’

  Well, Mrs Tancred thought, the hide of Missy, off out to see a young man on the very night of her father’s funeral. Oh you couldn’t pull the wool over her eyes. A breath of fresh air, a stroll by the canal, is it? The only business done there was of the unsavoury kind, in the shadow of the bridges. Not that she’d accuse Bella Casey of that. But Mrs Tancred, mother of three daughters, knew well when a lie was being told. She had a nose for it. What amazed her was that it was Bella Casey making those ramshackle excuses. She’d always been a girl for the books, never gave her mother a day’s worry and now, all of a sudden …

  Guiltily, Bella made her way down Dorset Street, looking over her shoulder as she went for fear that – what? – Mother might be following and learn her true intentions. It was ridiculous, she knew. Perhaps it was the ghost of her father she feared would appear, doomed for a certain term to walk the night. But Pappie had died in a state of grace; he had no need to linger. She turned the thought on its head. Perhaps Corporal Beaver’s declaration of interest coming at this moment was due to Pappie’s intercession? There, she felt better. She was glad to reach the illuminated streets and the sounds of revelry on Rutland Square. There might have been rowdies spilling out on to the street from pubs and wine lodges but they left her alone. Maybe it was out of respect for her mourning garb.

  The season was on the change and the nights were drawing in so it was verging on darkness. She could feel her heart thumping faster than was usual but it wasn’t romantic fervour, but the subterfuge that agitated her. Small doubts niggled at her – was Corporal Beaver’s manner a mite oily, his looks on the flashy side, his eye a tad gamey, his manner too charming to be entirely sincere? But she countered with herself, wasn’t she settled now, with a year’s teaching behind her and an increment on the way? Wasn’t it high time for her to be considering her marriage lines? But what swayed her most in this argument with herself was the Reverend. A few days’ respite from him, even if it was to mourn for her dear Pappie, had convinced her. She had to find a way to escape from his avid clutches. Without Pappie, the breastplate of her armour against the world had been removed. Even though he had known nothing of her predicament, she felt weaker without him. Anyway, it was too late to turn back now for the Corporal was already there, standing under a halo of golden lamplight.

  ‘Is it yourself, Bella?’ he asked simply as she approached as if they had met by chance rather than by assignation.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it is.’

  ‘I knew you’d come,’ he said.

  How, she wondered, how did he know? Was there something about her that spoke so loudly of easy virtue when that was not at all her nature? What made him so sure that a respectable daughter, such as she was, would venture out and her father not cold in his grave? But she banished these disputatious thoughts. She was here, wasn’t she?

  They strolled down Sackville Street as light ebbed from the ashen sky. Corporal Beaver was attentive to a fault, steering her with the faintest touch to her elbow and prompting her into conversation with a gentle but confident air.

  ‘You are now a fully-fledged schoolma’am, the boys tell me,’ he said.

  It gratified her to know that he had been following her progress.

  ‘Yes,’ she said for she could think of no way to elaborate. She should have pressed him for some details of his occupation at this point but she found herself miserably mute.

  ‘How do you keep them all in check?’ he asked. ‘Bad enough to keep the barrack-room in order, but a squad of snotty children!’

  ‘We try to keep their noses clean,’ she retorted.

  ‘Touch-ay,’ he said winking.

  The humour seemed to lubricate their exchange and though she had been shy at the start, the words began to flow when she spoke about her work.

  ‘Lead by example, that is what Mr Pestalozzi, the great educator, would say.’

  ‘Pestalozzi – would he be an Italian now?’ the Corporal asked. He drew the eye out of Italian, she noticed.

  ‘No, no, he was Swiss,’ she replied. ‘In each child, Pestalozzi said, is a little seed that contains the design of the tree so the educator must take care that no untoward influence disturbs Nature’s march of developments. Before a child learns words by rote, he must understand and so the teacher must show the meaning of the word in a practical way.’

  ‘So you demonstrate …’ he said.

  ‘Exactly so!’ She was excited that he was so quick on the uptake.

  ‘Like the great generals,’ he went on, ‘with their battle plans.’

  ‘From the known to the unknown, that’s how Pestalozzi put it,’ she said. ‘Life shapes us and the life that shapes us is not a matter of words but action.’

  The Corporal was silent and Bella feared she had lost him. She had committed the sin of straying into abstraction where Pestalozzi would insist on the concrete. So she went on to describe the schoolroom in Dominick Street with its smoking stove and clouded windows. She chattered on about the motto she penned on the blackboard each day – A Healthy Mind in a Healthy Body, A Place for Everything and Everything in its Place, Inaction Begets Misdeeds, A Mended Woollen Smock is Better than A Silken Robe That Has Not Been Paid For – for even small children, she told him, must have something to aim for, some higher ambition to lift them out of whatever brute circumstances they might find themselves
in.

  ‘You’ll have to show me,’ he said.

  ‘Show you …?’

  ‘This cushy school you teach at,’ he replied. ‘When I was a lad, the leather was our teacher, which didn’t make me partial to book learning.’

  ‘Well, you have a fine hand, so your education wasn’t wasted on you.’

  He halted in his tracks and looked at her abashed.

  ‘Truth is, Bella, I didn’t scribe that note myself. ’Twas your Mick penned it for me, for I wouldn’t trust my own penmanship with a teacher.’

  It was her turn to colour. Imagine, she had not recognised her own brother’s hand! But then, a girl does not expect a love letter from her brother. No wonder Mick had been sniggering before he surrendered the note for he knew already what it contained.

  ‘But I dictated it,’ Corporal Beaver went on, ‘so the sentiments are mine, all mine.’

  He laid a hand at her waist to emphasise the point. ‘Tell me more about this Pestalozzi chap.’

  And so she prattled on as they ambled towards the river. Past Nelson’s Column, past the tram timekeeper in his half tall hat calling out his litany of destinations – Palmerston Park, Sydney Parade, Howth – past the Happy Ring House.

  ‘Oh look at me going on so,’ she said, ‘it must be the grief talking. Pappie, God rest him, was always keen to hear of my doings …’

  She found her voice trailing away, remembering a particular Sunday evening when she had come home from the College to relieve Mother in the sick room. Pappie had been steeped in slumber that night and she remembered thinking her vigil had been fruitless. To her shame, the change in him, his very frailty, had made her wary of him. Anyway, she was stuck in her books, swotting up on Joyce’s Handbook of School Management, on which Miss Swanzy was threatening to examine them the following week, and she was beside herself for fear she’d fail. She had been hard at it when Pappie cocked open an eye and said softly.

  ‘Fetch down the Shakespeare, Bella, there’s a good girl, and give us a bit of King Lear. I do love the way you read that.’