Venetia Kelly's Traveling Show: A Novel of Ireland

by Frank Delaney

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Haas.

  “How do you know?” asked Venetia.

  “He’s downstairs waiting,” said Mrs. Haas.

  Venetia made for the door and I stepped across to block her way.

  She persisted. “I have to do it. Then you come down.”

  Mrs. Haas, the unlikely champion, went with her. I heard Venetia say, “Harry?”

  My father replied, but I couldn’t hear it. I stepped out onto the landing, and kept out of sight; then I heard everything.

  “Is-is-is it true? That’s all I want to know. Is it true?”

  Venetia said, “It is true, Harry. It’s true.”

  “But he’s my son.”

  “That’s probably why.”

  My father then repeated himself. “Is it true? Is it?”

  “Yes, Harry. Yes.”

  “But—he’s my son, my lovely son.”

  “As I say—that’s probably why.”

  “How could you?”

  Venetia said, “I have no idea.”

  My father’s speech hesitation now disappeared—as it did when he was under extreme pressure; I’ve often wondered why the precise opposite wasn’t the case. His voice rose.

  “Where is he?”

  “He’s upstairs. About to take you to a funeral.”

  “To my own funeral, that’s where he’ll be taking me. To my own funeral.”

  “Shhh, Harry, easy now.” She handled him beautifully. “I will always love you.”

  “You can’t! How can you? Oh, my God, my own son!”

  “You mean a lot to me.”

  “My own son. My son. You can’t love two people.”

  “Yes, you can, Harry. You can love any number of people.”

  I moved. They heard me. I walked down the stairs.

  “Oh, Jesus God!” said my father and lowered his face.

  Perhaps the light did it, a dull sunlight through the glass of the hall windows in that old house. Perhaps my mind exaggerated it—but I had never thought of my father as old before. Now he looked not merely old but haggard.

  “What time is the funeral?” I asked, and walked past him.

  I’m bound to say that I felt myself swagger, even if—as I hope—I didn’t show it.

  We drove to a place called Kilcoran, to a little graveyard up on the hillside. In the car neither of us said a word. Will Mother be there? I wondered.

  Venetia had patted us both good-bye. In the car my father sat on his hands, he retrieved them, he bit his knuckles, he bit his nails, he sat on his hands again. He opened his window, put out his head, inhaled huge gobbets of air, closed the window, opened it again.

  As we were leaving, Venetia had murmured to me, “Say not a word. It will be difficult—but don’t say a single word.”

  “Difficult”? Oh, yes it was. He tried to open the conversation in a number of ways and I, who had never disrespected or disobeyed my father in my life, had to keep my mouth shut.

  He began with “This is a foul thing you’ve done. You must really hate me.” When I said nothing, “You must hate me. Do you hate me, Ben? I’ve always been good to you. Do you? Do you hate me?”

  I couldn’t put together this man with the farmer I saw astride his harvest stacks of straw and hay, directing his workers, the dust smoky in his red eyebrows.

  When he received no answer he lapsed into a kind of muttering. “Yes, that’s it, you hate me. This is an act of hate, I know that. This is hateful. Hate. Full. That’s what it is.”

  Then he fell silent. And then opened up again.

  “What was it? That you wanted what I had? The very thing that’s so dear to me? Is that it? Is that it, Ben? Just because I had it you wanted it, is that it? The young bull jealous of the old bull? She’ll drop you anyway, I know that, you’re too young for her, she’ll drop you like a stone.”

  For some time after that outburst he sat silently, except for the shifting of the hands here, there, and everywhere. He opened the window again, stuck his head out, and whoozed in mouthfuls of exaggerated air. Then he attacked once more.

  “I know what it is,” he said, triumph ringing from him. “I-I-I know what it is. You decided to usurp me so that I’d go back home. That’s it. A ploy. That’s it. Your mother put you up to this.”

  By great good mercy we had arrived at the graveyard when he came out with this. Amid five other cars, myriad bicycles, and a long chain of pony traps and horse-and-cart rigs, I drew to a halt, got out, and breathed.

  I knew Mother wouldn’t face it. She couldn’t. Others made up for her—cousins consumed with interest, who looked at my father and me as though at a zoo. My father greeted his sister, the widow, with great kindness—and as though his own life were as smooth as a lake. To my delight I saw James Clare across the little hilly burial plots.

  I shall keep this brief; it’s unpleasant. With prayers and the thoughts of his family, his close relatives, and a wide variety of friends and acquaintances, my uncle Denny went dust-to-dust. About three hundred people attended, their presence a compliment to the man’s decency. The prayers went by quickly and we began to disperse, picking our way through the graves.

  I wanted to speak to James Clare—but he made a sign that he’d be outside, and I thought I’d better wait for my father. In our part of the country (this was about twenty miles from my home), the gravediggers often don’t fill in the graves until the funeral drinking has ended. My father lingered until everybody had gone—and I waited for him, down the path, fifty or sixty yards away.

  He left the graveside slowly. Deep in thought he made his way to where I stood. By now everybody else had gone from the little cemetery, and we were masked from the road by trees and shrubs. He wore a coat that I’d never seen until that day, a gray coat, somewhat military in appearance, with epaulets and a belt. In no hurry he took slow steps through the green mounds until he found himself on the level pathway, much nearer now to me. He walked head down, still deep in thought.

  As he reached me, and just as I was beginning to walk beside him to the road, he grabbed my arm.

  “Come on. I’ll fight you for her. Come on.”

  I stood back, still determined to say nothing.

  “Come on! Put up your fists.”

  I shook my head and again tried to walk. He hopped ahead of me, like a comical rabbit, and blocked my way.

  “Fight-fight-fight for her. Settle it now. Fight for her.”

  In the distance, over my father’s shoulder, I saw James Clare walking back into the graveyard. He had attended to whomsoever he’d needed to see and had come back to find me. As I looked, he stopped, watching.

  I tried to get past, through, or around my father, but he stopped me—and this time he swung a punch. I got my head back out of the way—barely; his fist grazed me. He swung again—I evaded again. This time he held my sleeve and landed a heavy punch on the side of my head.

  Never had I intended that anything like this should happen. He hit me again, this time a stinging blow that made me reel. When I looked past him, James Clare had come closer but seemed to have no intention of stopping us.

  “Don’t tell me you haven’t the guts to fight for her. That’s-that’s-that’s why you won’t get her and I will.”

  The brawl began; I broke all the taboos in the world and fought back. In school nobody ever fought me because I was the biggest in my class. Outside of that, my life had been so sheltered that I hadn’t been exposed to violence. The only fight that I’d ever seen had been the Prizefight between my father and Mr. Kane, and that had perturbed me for months.

  Its memory came back now, vivid, sharp, and frightening, and I said to him, “I’m not Mr. Kane. You’ve no reason to hit me.”

  My father said nothing but he grew more violent, his punches stronger, harder, and delivered with more venom. How could this ever be repaired?

  I too have red hair—not unrelievedly so, more a deep, dark red, close to black. If red hair causes ignition—that can also help to explain how
the brawl progressed. I began to defend myself, and then I fought back. My first punch landed on my father’s right cheekbone and hurt my hand—but not enough to stop me. I saw the surprise in his eyes—he hadn’t truly expected me to respond. He saw the shock in my eyes, I think, at the fact that I had struck my own father, and he retaliated—with his fiercest punch so far.

  Now we went at it like two sailors in a bar. It became a savage and dirty fight, much worse than could ever have been anticipated. He bit my ear. He tried to gouge my eyes. I kicked him, I stamped on his ankle, I kicked his knee. We breathed heavily, each of us, we muttered at each other; the main sound, though, was a series of grunts and scuffles. I grappled for his arms to stop him, he kneed me close to the groin—in fact, I remember that he had avoided a kick by twisting, and I did the same, by instinct, I think.

  Under Heaven how can it have looked? Two otherwise decent men, father and son, locked in an ugly brawl of filthy intent in a sacred place. The fight ended when my father fell and I stamped on his neck and throat and kept my boot there. In that moment I aged twenty years, and I had my first taste of that bitter thing called remorse. Awful, truly awful.

  I removed my foot, stepped away, and sank to my haunches, in dreadful anguish. My father scarcely moved, but he talked to himself and that is how I knew that he hadn’t been injured. When he rose he had bruises across his throat, and on his face, livid red patches that began to turn blue. I had no idea how I looked but my face felt hot and sore—like my spirit.

  He walked away, brushing past the watching, waiting James Clare. I continued to squat; the pain in my heart had spread to my stomach and I felt that my bowels would split apart. No urge to weep, strangely—though I fancied that my father had begun to as he walked off. My abiding feelings can be summed up by words such as “ugliness” and “disgraceful” and “appalling.” I felt lower than low—my beloved father, my own beloved father—the disappointment, the shame, the loss.

  The footsteps that I heard approaching on the gravel path belonged to James Clare, and I stood up. My mouth had the salt taste of blood; I had a lip that was split on the inside, nothing serious. Small, watery blood came from my nose; my upper jaw hurt, as did both cheekbones, one eye, and the side of my head. But my soul hurt most of all.

  “Stand back here for a minute,” said James. “Rest yourself against the wall.”

  “Do you know who that was?” My voice had that snuffle you get as a child half an hour after you’ve been crying at the injustice of the world. “That was my father.”

  I found the wall and put my hands behind me at hip height to steady myself.

  “I know,” said James Clare. And then, this earnest, wise man said with great approval, “Do you know what you’ve done?”

  “Fought my own father.”

  “As the gods did.”

  Now I’m exhausted by that memory, so I’m going to digress a little into the politics of the day again. I had managed somehow to keep abreast of all that had been happening in the first days after the historic vote. Mr. de Valera had taken power, or was about to—he would become the prime minister or taoiseach (pronounced tee-shock, meaning “chieftain”) early in March, when the new Parliament assembled.

  I still think it was the most important moment in modern Irish history. It showed in more ways than one that we had come to maturity. Indeed, you could argue—and many did—that the government changed because we (a) were now a nation unto ourselves, and (b) therefore got buffeted by the harsh economic winds blowing across the Atlantic from the Depression in the United States.

  Certainly Mr. Cosgrave’s outgoing government had been the victim of the hard times, but at the same time he hadn’t managed to come up with anything that would inspire the electorate to keep him in power. So the feared Mr. de Valera had triumphed; the Risen People had risen further.

  I knew that it was going to be a fascinating year. When it became clear that a decisive parliamentary majority hadn’t been elected, many politicians continued to campaign. They held if not rallies, meetings; they roamed their constituencies if not exactly canvassing, pressing the flesh, as it’s now called.

  And had I not been so caught up in my own drama, I should have been enjoying this ongoing tumult every day. Had my father and I been at home, living a normal life as once we had been, the comments would have been stimulating and often funny. Instead, my home now had its interior doors locked against me; Mother had gone away; the life of the farm seemed near imminent collapse; and I had brawled with my father in an unseemly fistfight. Had all this turbulence stemmed from the tumult in the countryside? It’s tempting to look for blame elsewhere—but it doesn’t work for me.

  James Clare and I stood there for some time, mostly not talking. How shocked I felt, how dismayed. It seemed a very bad development indeed. He, getting the full story out of me, took a different position—a view that something major had taken place in my life and the life of my family, something fundamental and brave. I couldn’t reach that conclusion with him, so I let it sit in a realm of respect. We made an appointment to meet some weeks thence, and parted company. I kept that appointment and so did he, and by then everything had changed again, this time cataclysmically so.

  No sign of my father; I looked far and wide; I drove down lanes and up side roads; he had vanished. How is he going to get back to the show, still in Abbeyfeale? Has he disappeared again?

  When I gave up looking for him I took a new decision. Perhaps conflicted on account of my state of shock, I needed a feeling of home. It’s perhaps also true that, with my blood still on fire or at least smoldering, I wanted to see whether I could get to the bottom of what had happened in the house.

  And my abandonment of Mother now began to kick in. With my father “defeated,” or “dethroned,” or whatever epic word James would someday come up with, somebody had to look after her. And I was no more than twenty miles away.

  The gate was locked—by which I mean not shut, which it rarely was when we lived there; it had a padlock on it. Not a huge padlock—in fact small enough to tempt me. But the car contained heavy tools for wheels and suchlike, and I broke the padlock so hard the flying metal almost hit my eye; that would have been all I needed. I pushed the gate back and replaced the heavy stone that propped it open.

  As I rounded the bend in the driveway, I had to stop. Ahead marched twin lines of about twenty men, parading, shouldering weapons, presenting arms, all wearing blue shirts. They halted when they saw me, and their officer, as he turned out to be, made his way to the car. I’d never seen any of these people before.

  “Who are you?”

  I got out of the car and said, “I live here.” “With Mr. Kelly?”

  “Is he here?” From where was I acquiring this cunning?

  “He had to go to Dublin. As you know, he’s been elected.”

  “I had the pleasure of congratulating him.” My goodness, I had grown up fast! “I need to get some things.”

  The officer divided the men and I drove through. As I walked to our—open—front door, Mary Lewis came out and looked at me in some alarm.

  “What, Ben?”

  “Where’s my mother?”

  “They’ll go mad if they see you here.”

  “Who’s in the house?”

  “Mr. Kelly’s gone—”

  “Yes. To Dublin. Who’s in my room?”

  “They locked all the doors, Ben. I didn’t do it. Honest, I didn’t.”

  “When you tell me who you mean by ‘they,’ I might believe you.”

  She turned away and tried to close the door. I stuck my foot in it and she backed off, then ran toward the kitchen.

  The hallway, so carefully ordered by Mother, had been changed. My ancestor’s portrait (nobody knew anything about him except that his name was Hopkins) had been taken down and replaced with a framed election poster blaring the name Thomas Aquinas Kelly. Blank rectangles showed where other pictures were missing. The small chaise longue that Mother loved had pairs of army boo
ts piled on it. Several rifles leaned against the wall, in groups here and there. Two of the floor tiles had been broken as though something heavy had fallen on them.

  When I went to the kitchen door, Mary Lewis had locked herself in—no chance of forcing any doors in that old house. I went to the back stairs and found that door locked too; and when I finally got to the two upstairs landings, my parents’ bedroom door was now locked. Inside my own house, where I’d roamed free as a young bear since I could crawl, I now couldn’t move.

  Think, don’t feel. Cunning, not emotion.

  Look—I have no cunning. One day I hope you’ll find that out about me. In fact, I dislike it as a quality, even though I acknowledge its necessity at certain times and in certain situations. But I find it hard to quarry from within myself, and I found it hard to uncover then. Whatever I found in me, cunning or instinct, I went to the cottage, and there I found the truth beginning to unfold.

  Mother sat there, alone, in the cold, like a woman stunned. From time to time, I’ve visited old people in hospitals up and down the country, old people who’ve sent for me because they have a story to tell. As I walk through the hospital wards and corridors I glance through doors and I see people in different states of emotional condition. Some are lively, some recovering, some engaged with the nurses or their visitors, and some look into the distance, knowing that they have nothing to see.

  That’s how I found Mother. She still wore her coat as though she had been somewhere—I learned that she’d returned some hours earlier from her sister’s. And she hadn’t taken off her gloves.

  In those few weeks when I had come home she’d always looked up at me with immediate hope. That day she didn’t; she stared at me, said nothing, and her dull, hopeless expression didn’t change.

  The cottage seemed clean and neat, more than I could say for the house. I did what she always did in a crisis—made a pot of tea. Said nothing. Moved normally. Made, yes, a large pot of tea. When I had poured her a cup, and one for myself, I sat down in front of her and said, “All right. Tell me.”

  “We’ve lost the farm. And the house. They’re allowing me to live in the cottage. Until I find somewhere.”