Venetia Kelly's Traveling Show: A Novel of Ireland

by Frank Delaney

  At least as tall as her mother, she wore a towel around her head and a mask of white cream on her face, and she too entered a room as though walking onstage. She wore a blue ankle-length robe of some kind, not unlike a djellaba, with a hood. The entire effect, the hood, the death-white mask, the elongated stance—they all created a wild, unsettling combination of great force and total anonymity.

  I rose as my father did, and he began to introduce me.

  “This-this-this is Ben—”

  She didn’t glance at me; to my father she pointed out the fact that with cream plastered like dough all over her face and lips, she couldn’t speak; and she pointed a finger to the ceiling, meaning, I supposed, upstairs.

  He nodded, and said, “Good-good-good night, so, I’ll be up later.”

  How those words, how that moment, came back in the months ahead, came back to haunt me and hurt me—hurt me so hard for him, for his sake.

  He yearned toward her but didn’t follow—he was like a man in a skit whose boots were nailed to the floor; he leaned far forward and then sprang back. And I saw something in him at that moment that I’d never seen before—I saw a longing, a desperation. It’s the attitude you see in a dog that deserves praise but so far hasn’t received it, that willing eagerness, and if the master is withholding, that disappointment. My father subsided.

  Sarah reappeared. “Has Venetia retired?”

  My father nodded and turned to me.

  “Will-will-will you be all right going home?”

  “No, no, Harry, it’s much too late. This is glass-of-milk-and-spare-room time. Audrey!”

  And that’s how I first met Mrs. Haas, scratching Mrs. Haas, my eventual guardian angel. She came into the room, not like a human, but like a goose, a long inquiring neck jutting forward; in different circumstances my father would have called her “a peninsula—which is a long neck sticking out to see.”

  “Audrey, this is Harry’s wonderful son, Ben. Food, don’t you think? And the spare room?”

  Mrs. Haas looked at me, blinked, and clapped her hands.

  “Yes, I know,” said Sarah. “Gorgeous, isn’t he?”

  Then Mrs. Haas spoke: “Come vith me.”

  She and her spiky teeth beamed at me; it was like being smiled at by a saw. I liked her immediately. Now she was about to feed and house me under the same roof as my father. Was she leading me to a scaffold? No matter. I would have followed.

  I’ve never seen a cleaner kitchen. Don’t get me wrong—at home we didn’t have chickens jumping on the tablecloth. But our kitchen wasn’t a clinic. This was. The stone flags on the floor shone like mirrors; fine china twinkled on high shelves like the stars; copper pots hung from hooks, each a bronze sun. Everything felt so new—which it was, but I didn’t learn that for some time.

  To say that Mrs. Haas made sandwiches is to say that Rembrandt dabbled. She was a painter who preferred the knife to the brush, and she plastered butter on tiles of bread. On the bread she slammed down slabs of beef and onion slices as big as saucers, and then oiled the lot with runny chutney. As to milk, she poured not a glass but a vase.

  I think my hunger must have shown because she made me a second flagstone of a sandwich, and then a third. The sight of a man eating must have held some significant if undivined appeal for Mrs. Haas, because she looked like a woman touched by the gods. And she fed me that night as though I were a god.

  She talked to me too, all the time. In the beginning I never heard or understood a word because she muttered in an undertone, a happy noise, not unlike a baby, with lots of breath and highs and lows, and she did so in a language I had never heard and didn’t understand.

  In later years I discovered that when excited or very happy, she spoke a dialect of Austro-German from the province of Carinthia, which is why I didn’t understand it. But I liked its humming noises; the merry little ululations reminded me of Father Christmas in his workshop with his elves—I have no idea why.

  As I ate, so many questions rode across my mind like horse soldiers. Who owns this house? Who could be so rich in Charleville as to have a house like this? And it seems to go on and on—Mrs. Haas had led me down a passageway, a long, winding corridor. And how do Sarah and Venetia Kelly happen to live here? What is their relationship with my father? Who is this strange woman with the pointy teeth, the long legs, and the thick accent, who keeps smiling at me as though I were her bridegroom, and who then proceeds to scratch her behind so energetically when she sits down that I have to look away and chew my sandwich extra hard so as not to hear the noise?

  When I had finished my “big fnack,” as Mrs. Haas called it, she beckoned me, and I followed on this night of beckoning and not yet reckoning. Upstairs, with a lamp that she’d taken from a corridor table, she showed me into yet another pretty room, with a single bed. It had a bathroom attached and—something we didn’t have at home—running water, hot and cold. And all the while I was editing, editing in my mind what I could or would tell Mother.

  Mrs. Haas made a wide gesture with her hand, indicating that I must enjoy the place. Then she bowed—bowed! To me!—and withdrew. I sat on the bed, bewildered—replete, yet anxious; cared for, yet bereft. I washed my face, took off my clothes, and put on the nightshirt that had been laid out; long and white, it made me look like a young Druid.

  With the lamp extinguished, and no streetlights through the window, a peaceful darkness settled. Such a comfortable bed; from the sheets issued a perfume of sweet orange; I closed my eyes.

  Now came the sounds of the stillness. This is when the mice can be heard, their little scratches and pattering runs. This is when the foxes can be heard, barking clear and cold on the distant hills. This is when you hear the spit and yowl of fighting cats, tearing at themselves and the night.

  I heard none of those sounds in that Charleville room—instead I heard something else. From somewhere nearby, not next door but perhaps in the room beyond that, I heard voices. One rose and fell, as though reciting, as though entertaining or even imploring, declaiming even, with speeches of great drama and romance.

  I got up, and like a prowler I stood at my door and listened harder. From the show, I soon recognized Venetia Kelly’s voice, so much younger, lower, and fuller than her mother’s. The other voice could be heard but rarely, and not continuously; it uttered only interjections, sounds of appreciation. And that was my father’s voice.

  When I was six years old, I fell quite ill. Dr. Hassett diagnosed pleurisy—“Like thorns inside your lungs,” he said. The pleurisy had been no more than the scout; the entire troop then followed in the shape of pneumonia, both lungs.

  In those pre-penicillin days they called the telling moment in pneumonia the “Crisis,” when the patient either turned the corner or didn’t. Notwithstanding fever and incoherence, I recall it so clearly.

  My parents took turns with nurses to sit in my room, watching to take me through the Crisis. They behaved so differently. Mother, practical, patted my forehead with cool flannel every few minutes. My father sat and read to me, and every so often he animated his reading with enthusiastic punctuations. He’d say, “Oh, this-this-this is great!” or “Very good, very good!”

  Through that wall that night I was now hearing both—the rise and fall of Venetia’s narrative drama, punctuated by his appreciation.

  When those noises ceased, I went to sleep. I believe that I slept soundly, yet I had the distinct impression that sometime after dawn, when there was a little early light, somebody came into my room. Whoever it was came to my bed and peered down at me, then went as quietly as they’d entered. The feeling they left behind had nothing in it but warmth.

  Nowadays I’m good in strange houses. For instance, I know what to do at that most difficult time for a houseguest—the morning. That’s in part because I’ve had a lot of practice—but often when I come down to breakfast in somebody’s house I remember that morning in Charleville.

  Perhaps I was exhausted; I never moved a bone until nine o’clock. But I
knew where I was the moment I opened my eyes, and I lay for a while and listened for the noises of the house.

  That’s one of the pleasures of visiting a new place—hearing the morning sounds. Farms are delightful—the clop of horses, the cluckings in the yard. In 1932, Irish towns and cities were still mostly hooves and footsteps, and had barely begun to hear the noise of machinery—for years I rushed to the nearest window if an engine clanked.

  In Charleville that morning I heard a dog bark somewhere in the town. I heard two people on the street talking loudly—and when they stopped I heard the rise and fall of conversation very close by. Listening at my door again, I figured that the talk came from downstairs, and I got ready very fast.

  A dining-room table had been laid for three people, and two already sat there—Sarah and my father. Sarah smiled and pointed to the empty chair as she might have pointed to a treasure-chest onstage, and I sat down. She touched my arm again.

  “Good morning, Ben.”

  I nodded, not yet educated sufficiently to know the practices of sophisticated people. At home nobody said, “Good morning.” The day began with somebody’s thought process, my father saying something like, “Unless he gets an overall majority, and I doubt it,” or Mother saying, “I don’t know at all. By this time last year I had four litters.” In both cases their conversations had already begun with the world, if only inside their own heads. Therefore, I wasn’t used to “Good morning,” so I half-nodded and said nothing.

  My father had shaved—and shaved well; the mustache had been trimmed, thank God. His eyes had red rims, and he wore the same clothes as yesterday.

  And once again I knew that I had no true clue as to what was going on. If I’d stabbed a guess at it, I’d have said that some crazy passion was up and running, but it might be nothing like anybody could imagine.

  “Did you sleep well?” Sarah said. “I slept wonderfully.” She wasn’t waiting for an answer from me. “I sleep so well in these country towns.”

  Mrs. Haas blew in, making that “fffsss” noise with her teeth; I had heard it last night and wondered whether she had something wrong with her, some minor body complaint. I would learn that she made that noise if she felt about to embark upon an important task. She saw me, gave me a wide smile, and clapped her hands.

  “Food. Lots of it!” and she turned on her heel and marched out, going, “Fffsss.”

  “Audrey’s smitten,” Sarah said to my father and me.

  In those days I didn’t know what “smitten” meant, and I didn’t ask.

  It’s difficult to look at people when you desperately want to look at them; there’s a danger, especially at such close quarters as a breakfast table, that you’ll stare. I needed to see Sarah in the morning light, and above all I wanted to look at my father.

  “My hands look wonderful today,” said Sarah, holding them out like a priest. “Don’t they?”

  My father and I nodded.

  “It’s the water down here,” she said. “Is the water different from Dublin? It was very different in Killarney.”

  “There’s a lot of limestone around here,” said my father. “Great for the bones.”

  Had his voice changed? Less hearty? Or was he merely deferring to this exotic woman across the table from him? No—he was subdued. I watched him for the next few minutes, chitchatting with Sarah about this and that, mostly about Sarah, and he was definitely less ebullient than the man I knew.

  Mrs. Haas came back with a breakfast for three laborers and planked it down in front of me. Sarah laughed; significantly, my father said nothing. This was strange because he never failed to comment on the size of the meals I consumed—“We’ll be seeing more of you” being his favorite remark.

  Sarah reached a finger to my plate and took off a small fried mushroom.

  “I simply must have a taste,” she said, and chewed it as though eating something dainty and arcane.

  The expression on my face must have showed—I wanted to cut off her hand at the wrist for taking my food—because she said, “Oh. Perhaps you don’t share food.” She patted my arm again. “Sorry, Ben.”

  That smile melted the laces in my boots.

  I ate; they chatted—no, Sarah chatted and my father made agreeing noises. Mrs. Haas steamed in and out, checking that I had enough. I ate whatever she brought.

  When I’d finished, Sarah said, “Now I expect you two will want to talk,” and she rose from the table. My father looked disturbed. He stood, then sat down as she swept from the room. That house was freezing cold; over a long dress Sarah wore an ankle-length coat of brocade, purple, cream, and gray.

  We didn’t move; now I could see my father, look at him full in the face, inspect him; I had more courage than the previous night.

  “How are you, Daddy?”

  He looked away, then back at me. Not a word did he manage; his lips didn’t move.

  I persisted. “Are they looking after you all right? What about your clothes? Do you need gloves?”

  Now he couldn’t take his eyes from mine. He sat there, looking full on at me, straight into my eyes, in silence. At the edge of my field of vision I kept seeing the polka-dot handkerchief in his breast pocket.

  Neither of us stirred, and I never broke the eye contact. Months later, James Clare suggested to me that my behavior—no matter what had happened afterward—had probably saved my father’s life.

  “Not every bit of love has to be spoken,” James said. “Often the unspoken piece says most.”

  Well, it certainly was largely unspoken that morning. We had very few exchanges after that.

  I said, “We all miss you.”

  Then I said, “Where are you going to vote?”

  And finally, “Daddy, every day, I’m going to be just behind you. Wherever you’re going.”

  To each of these remarks my father said nothing. He lowered his eyes, took out the handkerchief, wiped the palms of his hands, stowed the handkerchief again, and sat quietly, his hands in his lap. He looked like a man waiting for a frightening diagnosis.

  I felt a breeze, and a door opened from another part of the house. In came Venetia Kelly, in a white floor-length coat, tall and straight as a Roman column. She had drawn a scarf across most of her face, and this gave her a swathed look head to foot. My father stood up as she entered, and, taught to do so for a lady, I stood too.

  She glanced at me, fleeting, piercing. With the scarf across her face and the vivid, glowing eyes, it was a look of a woman in some Eastern bazaar. Then, with a sweep of her hand, she indicated the world out-doors—and she was gone.

  My father didn’t sit again. He fidgeted, and I knew it was time to go. As I went to the door he followed me and said, “Give-give-give your mother my best, my very-very-very best regards.”

  The crack in his voice twanged like a dirge.

  Blinking in the weak sunlight, I stumbled out into the street and found emotional refreshment. Against all this private drama of ours, the election campaign ran like a film sound track or an opera recitative. Every town had a rally, every village had posters. Through some parishes went men on bicycles, with crude bullhorns, and in Charleville that morning I saw again my favorite candidate.

  I can’t give you his name, because he was—believe it or not—elected, and he went on to serve in Parliament for the rest of his life, and we have to respect the dead. He was my parents’ favorite candidate too, and he’d already given us great entertainment; we’d watched his career since we’d first seen him, at a rally in Cashel in the 1927 election.

  Now, this morning, his face had grown redder, but he wore the same remarkable headgear; shaped like a flowerpot, it came straight from a nineteenth-century stage-Irish cartoon—it even had a buckle on the front like a leprechaun’s hat. He stood with a megaphone on a parked farmer’s cart, the horse swishing its tail now and then. He wore tall boots, tied at the top with harvesting twine. He had a medically compelling wealth of saliva. Here, roughly, is what I heard him say.

  “Ladi
es and gentlemen, yes. I come before you, yes. To stand beside you. And to stand behind you as you go forward, yes. And as we look ahead, we will have no turning back. This country is at a standstill, yes. Sideways at a crossroads, that’s where we are. Which road will you take? Ask yourself that, yes. That crossroads can have only the one road. Which road will I take, yes? Answer came there none. I’m here to guide you down that one road. ’tisn’t the road to rack and ruin. But you already know that; otherwise you wouldn’t be at a standstill, at the crossroads, not knowing which way to turn. And ’tisn’t the road to pestilence, famine, and decay. You know that for a fact. Every farmer should be getting a better price for your milk. Your local creamery should be paying you more money. I’m here to guide you down the crossroads.”

  A heckler shouted, “Come down here and look at yourself up there,” and the dozen people listening laughed.

  Perhaps he would be successful and get elected because nobody could make out a blind thing he was saying. And in that he wasn’t alone.

  Our candidate’s confused oratory mimicked my thoughts. I came home from Charleville reeling and tumbling, my mind full of the wide, stylish house and all of that conflicting experience. And—I had done as I’d said I would; I had found him. As I drove I grappled with what to tell Mother, how much to divulge, and how to phrase it. How should I control the delight that I genuinely felt? Such a pleasure, seeing my father and speaking to him again.

  Nor could I say how much I’d enjoyed the company of Sarah Kelly. I’d seen Venetia only twice, once to be introduced, and once fleetingly as she passed through the house; on neither occasion did she acknowledge me. As I neared home I understood that the good, positive news of having found my father would distract Mother sufficiently, and I’d never have to give my own reactions.

  She’d heard the car, and she’d come to the back door to intercept me.

  “Did you—?” She let the question hang.

  “I found him. After much searching.” I was able to smile. “And I had two long talks with him.”