The Parting Glass

by Gina Marie Guadagnino

  By Sunday, Seanin could not stop smiling at me as we walked from St. Patrick’s down to Colleen O’Brien’s pub on Castle Street. Nuala had gone back to Glencolumbkille that morning, hitching a ride an hour before dawn, and we were walking alone. Every few paces, it seemed, he would glance over at me and break out into a foolish grin.

  “What’s that you’re grinning at then?” I finally asked him, exasperated.

  “Yourself,” he said, doing it again. “I like to see a lass in love. Puts roses in her cheeks, and you’re too pale without ’em, Maire.”

  “Ah, go on then,” I said, with an ill-concealed waver in my voice. “Who’d I be in love with anyway?”

  “Mar, if I was half as thick as you take me for, I’d be, well, as thick as your bein’ now.”

  I said nothing, my face going hot. My bootheels ringing on the cobbles, the crying gulls above seemed to swell to an unnatural volume in the silence when I should have said something. I swallowed nervously. My tongue felt thick.

  Seanin drew my hand through his arm. “I’ll not say a word, Mar. You know that, sure? Not a word to a soul. I’ll not mention it again if you’d rather I didn’t.” He paused, waiting for me to respond. When I didn’t, he said, “I’m happy for you, Mar, is all. Can I not be happy for you?”

  We had reached the open door of the pub by now, and I unhooked my arm from his. “Come on now, Seanin,” I said. “Let me stand you a pint.”

  In the cool of the pub, a stoneware pint sweating before me, Seanin laughing at some quip of Colleen’s as she read aloud her latest letter from her son, Dermot, in America, I thought how grand it would be, next week, to bring Nuala around again. We would sit side by side, arms at each other’s waists, and Colleen would call her a pretty thing, and wink at me for my good luck. As I sat wrapped in my daydream, the swell of noise in the bar fell away, and the clink of glasses, the peals of laughter, the rumble and the roar dimmed to a faint hum. In my daydream, Nuala was smiling at me over the rim of her mug. There in the bar, I smiled back, idiotically, at nothing.

  Thinking back years later, I could not have said what my intentions with Nuala were. If it had been a lad I was walking out with, I might have dreamed of marriage, perhaps a cottage, or a child on my knee. With Charlotte, of course, I could never dare to dream. I think now that, back then, I was too young and too stupid to think past the next kiss, the next embrace, the next night in Nuala’s arms.

  There would be entire nights running, when, too wearied from the day’s labors, there was nothing for us but sleep. The day after such a night, Nuala would be irritable and fidgety. She would go out of her way, in the course of our work, to caress my hand, or tuck my hair under my cap, once even rubbing my bottom as I knelt over the hearth I was sweeping. I would playfully bat her wandering hands away, making her laugh, her eyes twinkling with mischief.

  It was Nuala, in one such fey mood, who hit upon the guest rooms. A finger to her lips, she took me by the hand and led me up the back stairs to the hall from which the guest rooms branched. The first door she tried was open, and she ushered me in, closing it silently behind us. The room was unaired, and smelled of must. A fine layer of dust lay over the furniture.

  “What are we doing here?” I hissed. “It’ll be hell to pay if the missus finds us up here.”

  “Hush now, Maire,” she said. “Sure and there’s none as ever comes up here unless there’s company.” She sat me in a stiff-backed chair, facing the bed, and whispered in my ear, “Close your eyes until I say.”

  When she told me to, I opened them to find her lying naked on the bed. Many a night I had lain with her in my arms, running my hands and lips over her body, but never had I seen her fully undressed. I drank in the sight of her. Her skin was taut over her wiry frame, her limbs corded from hard work. She lay with her legs spread, and I climbed up onto the bed to kneel between them, kissing the moistened petals there. She tasted of earth and salt, and she raised her hips to meet me, moaning softly as I felt her tense, arching up one last time before going slack on the bed. I crawled up beside her and took her in my arms, but she was atop me, shimmying up my skirts with questing, eager fingers as she kissed me. I was all ready for her, and it was over far too quickly.

  Nuala was never one to be satisfied with the things she had; once she had accomplished a thing, she set about striving for more of it. It was Katie who caught us, in the end. Opened the door, bold as brass, and hollered loud enough to bring up Mrs. Morgan at a run. We were having a tumble in the guest room, our third that week, for the wet little minx could never have enough, and Katie was sore tired after months of us slipping off with our work half-done. I never knew if she’d had an inkling of what she’d find when she opened the door.

  I remember Mrs. Morgan’s face well enough. We were standing before her in the guest room, still half-clothed. I remember my shift kept slipping down one of my shoulders, and I kept tugging it back up impatiently. I don’t remember what she said, or what accusation she made. But suddenly there was Nuala, weeping at her feet. Her voice sounded so far away as she sobbed, “She made me, Missus, she made me.” The last thing I saw was the hard look in her watery eye as Katie led me from the room by my ear.

  I remember thinking absurdly that I had never realized that Katie, a woman I’d known nearly my whole life, was so damn strong as she dragged me down the back stairs and shoved me out the kitchen door. I tried to speak, to say something in my own defense, but she slammed the door in my face with a look of pure hatred twisting her features. The yard was empty, the grounds of Ballyboyle spread before me, and, compelled by some primal impulse, I took off toward the fields at a run.

  I lay in the tall grass, my back damp through, the smell of sheep heavy around me. Above, pendulous clouds hung like gathered draperies. I closed my eyes. The earth had warmed beneath my body, cooler in places when I shifted my weight. A breeze played over my face, the cloying sheep scent cut by the sharp smell of the coming rain. I could hear Seanin’s voice on the wind, my name borne faintly across the meadow. I closed my eyes tighter. He had news. Or he didn’t.

  I had been lying in the grass for hours, my heartbroken sobs ebbing as I began to grow numb. I had retched every tender feeling I had ever had, and was now empty of all, save my great love of this land, of this pasture where we had spent so many afternoons watching Da break the yearling colts. I could close my eyes then and still see his face, the way he looked when he took each of us by the hand, his expression as he said, You are so like your mother as he reached out to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear.

  As I lay there, thinking back on my father, what came to me, as it always does, if not his face, was the smell of him. And when, if you take my meaning, I could capture the impression of that smell in my mind, one perfect memory that I have of him always stirred and rose to the surface of my mind.

  It was the hour just after dawn, pale light slanting down through the slatted windows of the stables. The horses nickered from the cool shadows of their stalls. Hand in hand, we moved down the aisle between them, just Da and me. He told over their names to me, his voice a great, low rumble, echoing quietly through the high rafters. All around us was the smell of sweet hay, saddle oil, leather, and polished brass, and the heady musk of so many horses close together. It was a warm, clean animal scent, which clung to Da’s whiskers and clothes at night when we sat before the fire together. To me, it was the smell of steadiness and calm.

  Da swung me up to settle on his hip, though I was a great big lass then, too grown to be held like a wee babby. He held me high so I could see over the door of the stall to the new roan foal, asleep at its dam’s side. I watched the foal breathe, fascinated by the steady intake of breath and exhalation, by the way the ribs rose and fell so deeply. Da whispered to me, and though I could clearly recall the tickle of his whiskers against my ear and the deep timbre of his voice, his words were lost. I could only ever recall that moment and think, though he must not have said the words then—he said them rarely, if at all�
�that this was his way of showing he loved me.

  That love was there, welling up in me, filling the empty place where I had retched away all the shame and pain that Nuala Begley had burst in me. That love of my father, of the land, of this corner of this island where I was born and he had died, and in the intervening years, bookended by sorrows, where there had been something like joy.

  The sound of my name, rising and falling with the breeze, became one with the sheep scent, became one with my great, welling love of the land. The empty, hashed-away place was overwhelmed with this love. Tears wound their way down my cheeks, and I felt, for one golden moment, healed.

  By the time Seanin reached me, my tears had all fallen and dried, the hot, welling love hardened, and myself prepared for whatever he would say. For a brief, glorious moment, I had been one with that island on which I had been born, and now I wore the memory like a pendant, hanging just above the void where once lay my heart.

  I could hear the grasses rustle as he came to lie beside me. I turned my head and opened my eyes to meet his. His lids were red-rimmed. When he spoke, his voice was raw.

  “There’s a ship,” he said. “It sails from Skibbereen in a week.”

  I nodded.

  “I spoke to Colleen O’Brien. She says she’ll write Dermot for us.”

  I closed my eyes.

  “It’s better this way,” he said, pleading.

  I nodded.

  “Just answer me one thing,” he said. “One thing, and I swear I’ll never trouble you over it again. Did you love her?”

  “Love her?” I repeated stupidly. “Love her? I wanted her. I wanted . . . what it was I did with her. But did I love her? I don’t know. She hurt me deep. My heart’s near broke, and no mistaking, but in the end I’ll get on. Without her. I’ll get on without her. No, I don’t suppose I loved her. I don’t think I did. No.”

  He shrugged, sitting up, rubbing his eyes with the backs of his reddened knuckles. “Just as well. I popped the wee bitch one in the mouth for that trick she played you.”

  The thought of Seanin’s fist connecting with Nuala’s jaw did not move me in the least. I sighed. “You shouldn’t have done that, Seanin. I expect the wee chit’ll have told, and there’s no going back for you after that.”

  “Fuck going back, Mar,” he said, rising, offering me both his hands. “Are you not my sister, my only flesh? Where you go, I go.”

  If you are dishonest to your employers, and it be discovered, you cannot expect either to have a character, or to be retained.

  —The Duties of a Lady’s Maid

  Liddie stubbed out her third cigarette with far more malice than the task strictly required. “So they turned you out with nothing more than the clothes on your back? And they kept that lying little cunt on?” She sniffed with an aggrieved air. “I like that. And you born on the estate, no less. Oh, I like that fine.”

  Objectively, I rather enjoyed the fact that my misfortunes seemed always to move Liddie to a passion of some sort. Practically, however, I was frequently far too heartsore to derive much sympathy for the offense she took at my ill-treatment. I drew her close to me, as much to hide my face as to take comfort in the nearness of her.

  “Must sound absurd to one brothel-born. All that to-do over the goings on under the sheets.”

  She pulled back to regard me, brushing a stray lock from my face, cupping my cheek with her hand. “It’s always a to-do, isn’t it? That’s why brothels exist, after all.”

  “I never thought about it like that before,” I said.

  “I can assure you my virginity was just as closely guarded as any debutante’s, being just as valuable, in its way,” she said drily, settling her head against my shoulder. “Men will pay a mint to be the first to plow your field, whether it’s in the form of a house on Bond Street and a family name or fifty pounds directly to the Abbess’s hand. The only difference is that the light-skirt doesn’t have to look him in the face over the breakfast table every day for the rest of her life, and the debutante does.”

  “How old were you?” I asked quietly.

  Liddie turned her neck sharply, the vertebrae popping satisfactorily. “Fourteen. Mama wanted to wait until I was fifteen—that’s how old she was—but the Lady Abbess had a . . . request. An offer. More considerable than my mother’s objections. And I knew it was only a matter of time. So.”

  “Was he . . . did you . . .” I trailed off, cheeks aflame, unsure of what it was I was asking, or if I even wanted to know the answer. I’d heard of girls who were forced, naturally. It happened all the time, in Donegal Town. There’d be words whispered of landlords who had taken daughters and sisters to their ruin when the rent was short, of masters who considered every female on the estate their rightful property. Even at Ballyboyle, everyone knew that the old master had been a stag in rut—there were rumors of housemaids sent suddenly away. Da had spoken darkly about the way old Mr. Boyle had looked at my mother when she came to the estate. But none of that was anything like being raised to know that one day your maidenhead would be sold to the highest bidder. I wondered at the cold-blooded mind that sent a fourteen-year-old girl off to be deflowered for a price, and more so at the sanguine mind of the fourteen-year-old girl who went about it as the start of her career.

  “I always knew I would do it, someday,” Liddie said quietly. “Growing up as I did, I knew what to expect. I knew it would hurt, but I knew there was pleasure to be had. The Abbess never suffered brutes. It wasn’t that sort of establishment. I came away bleeding and bruised, and she gave me a fortnight to recover myself to see if I wanted to go on about it.”

  “What if you hadn’t?”

  “Well, I didn’t really, you see,” she said slowly. “I wanted to be on the stage. Oh, I know,” she said, waving away my look before it could blossom into a full-blown objection. “There’s no company of players in the world for the likes of me. When they need someone of my complexion, why, that’s what cosmetics are for after all. But after all, you’ll never see a dusky Juliet.”

  I took her hand. “I’ve seen a dusky Olivia, and, being dusky, I do find her fair.”

  Liddie drew my hand to her lips, kissing it and squeezing my fingers tightly before letting it go.

  “The lady doth protest too much,” she said ruefully. “It was a dream, and one I gave up on long ago. So it was always to be brothel work for me. And it takes more than light-skirts to run a brothel of that caliber, you know,” she said, smirking. “They employ a terrible lot of laundresses, they keep a cook. Someone’s got to sweep the hearths. There’s never any shortage of work to be done.” She shouldered me gently. “But I was happier on my back playing the courtesan than I was at the thought of blacking grates or lighting the lamps. I told you before I wasn’t cut out for service.”

  “You talk overmuch, Liddie Lawrence,” I said, wearied with the well-trod lines of our old argument. “Just now’s the time for silence.”

  “Maire, my dear,” she murmured before covering my mouth with her own, “I could not agree more.”

  Such marriages have taken place, but they are seldom, if ever, happy ones.

  —The Duties of a Lady’s Maid

  Charlotte Walden was to marry Elijah Dawson at St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church on Wednesday the twenty-seventh of September, in the year of our Lord 1837. The date and location were secured only after protracted negotiations between Geraldine Dawson, Augusta Walden, and Thaddeus Graham, the first feeling it crucial that the nuptials take place at Salisbury Park, while the latter two insisted on the fashionable Great Jones Street congregation that the Graham diamond mines had helped to endow. Thaddeus Graham had contributed quite handsomely to the new parish, and, in the two years since its massive carved doors had opened, that gentleman’s family had not had occasion to patronize the establishment with a wedding, baptism, or funeral. To miss the first opportunity for such an honor was not to be borne, and even the stately and stationary Geraldine Dawson could see the impropriety of the bride marr
ying elsewhere than the church her grandfather’s wealth had made possible.

  This concession to locale was tempered by Mrs. Dawson’s insistence on selecting the date. A coveted June date would be far too soon for Charlotte to make the necessary preparations, and, upon reluctantly agreeing to make the remove to the City to witness her grandson and only heir’s marriage, Mrs. Dawson was adamant in her refusal to subject herself to either the stink of the City’s miasma in full summer or the chill of winter travel. As she could not be persuaded to depend upon her living to see another June, it was agreed that an auspicious autumn day should be chosen, and Charlotte conveyed to me as I unlaced her one evening that her future grandmama held with the old rhyme “Married in September’s golden glow, smooth and serene your life will go,” and with Wednesday being “the best day of all.”

  Naturally, I was not consulted, but I held with the notion that Charlotte might as well bow to the old lady’s wishes now, as it would be good practice for her married life. I could not see the appeal in shackling myself to a man who was wholly his grandmother’s creature, but then I never saw much to appeal in any man, and, without Johnny in her life, one flavor of domestic tranquillity would be much like the next to Charlotte.

  Augusta Walden, who had herself been married on an auspiciously chosen Monday in February, held with no such superstitions. She had enjoyed neither Monday’s promised health nor February’s assurance of a solid mate for life, and she sniffed loudly that anyone who put so much stock in a pack of absurd old peasant rhymes was a delusional fool. Grace Porter, over tea in Mrs. Harrison’s closet, whispered that her mistress was often privately in tears over the preparations for her daughter’s marriage. Mrs. Walden began choosing gowns of deeper purple hues, and Grace was kept busy stitching black edging on her more colorful frocks. She wore Mr. Walden’s cameo every day now, and could often be seen running her fingers over the smooth, carven features fastened at her throat.