Brooklyn

by Colm Toibin

  “That Miss Kelly,” her mother said, “is as bad as her mother and I heard from someone who worked there that that woman was evil incarnate. And she was just a maid in Roche’s before she married. And Kelly’s used to be a boarding house as well as a shop, and if you worked for her, or even if you stayed there, or dealt in the shop, she was evil incarnate. Unless, of course, you had plenty of money or were one of the clergy.”

  “I’m just there until something turns up,” Eilis said.

  “That’s what I said to Rose when I was telling her,” her mother replied. “And don’t listen to her if she says anything to you.”

  Rose, however, never mentioned that Eilis was to begin work at Miss Kelly’s. Instead, she gave her a pale yellow cardigan that she herself had barely worn, insisting that the colour was wrong for her and that it would look better on Eilis. She also gave her some lipstick. She was out late on Saturday night so she did not witness Eilis going to bed early, even though Nancy and Annette were going to the pictures, so that she would be fresh for work at Miss Kelly’s on her first Sunday.

  Only once, years before, had Eilis been to seven o’clock mass and that was on a Christmas morning when her father was alive and the boys were still at home. She remembered that she and her mother had tiptoed out of the house while the others were sleeping, leaving the presents under the tree in the upstairs living room, and coming back just after the boys and Rose and their father had woken and begun to open the packages. She remembered the darkness, the cold and the beautiful emptiness of the town. Now, leaving the house just after the twenty to seven bell rang, with her shop coat in a carrier bag and her hair tied in a ponytail, she walked through the streets to the cathedral, making sure she was in plenty of time.

  She remembered that on that Christmas morning, years before, the seats in the central aisle of the cathedral had almost been full. Women with a long morning in the kitchen ahead of them wanted an early start. But now there was almost nobody. She looked around for Miss Kelly, but she did not see her until communion and then realized that she had been sitting across from her all along. She watched her walking down the main aisle with her hands joined and her eyes on the ground, followed by Mary, who was wearing a black mantilla. They both must have fasted, she thought, as she had been fasting, and she wondered when they would have their breakfast.

  Once mass was over, she decided not to wait for Miss Kelly in the cathedral grounds but instead lingered at the news-stand as they unpacked bundles of newspapers and then stood outside the shop and waited for her there. Miss Kelly did not greet her or smile when she arrived but moved gruffly to the side door, ordering Eilis and Mary to wait outside. As she unlocked the main door of the shop and began to turn on the lights, Mary went to the back of the shop and started to carry loaves of bread towards the counter. Eilis realized that this was yesterday’s bread; there was no bread delivered on a Sunday. She stood and watched as Miss Kelly opened a new strip of long sticky yellow paper to attract flies and told Mary to stand on the counter, fix it to the ceiling and take down the old one, which had dead flies stuck to every part of it.

  “No one likes flies,” Miss Kelly said, “especially on a Sunday.”

  Soon, two or three people came into the shop to buy cigarettes. Even though Eilis had already put her shop coat on, Miss Kelly ordered Mary to deal with them. When they had gone, Miss Kelly told Mary to go upstairs and make a pot of tea, which she then delivered to the newspaper kiosk in exchange for what Eilis learned was a free copy of the Sunday Press, which Miss Kelly folded and put aside. Eilis noticed that neither Miss Kelly nor Mary had anything to eat or drink. Miss Kelly ushered her into a back room.

  “That bread there,” she said, pointing to a table, “is the freshest. It came yesterday evening all the way from Stafford’s, but it is only for special customers. So you don’t touch that bread whatever you do. The other bread’ll do fine for most people. And we have no tomatoes. Those ones there are not for anybody unless I give precise instructions.”

  After nine o’clock mass the first crowd came. People who wanted cigarettes and sweets seemed to know to approach Mary. Miss Kelly stood back, her attention divided between the door and Eilis. She checked every price Eilis wrote down, informed her briskly of the price when she could not remember, and wrote down and added up the figures herself after Eilis had done so, not letting her give the customer the change until she had also been shown the original payment. As well as doing this, she greeted certain customers by name, motioning them forward and insisting that Eilis break off whatever she was doing to serve them.

  “Oh, Mrs. Prendergast now,” she said, “the new girl will look after you now and Mary will carry everything out to the car for you.”

  “I need to finish this first,” Eilis said, as she was only a few items away from completing another order.

  “Oh, Mary will do that,” Miss Kelly said.

  By this time people were five deep at the counter. “I’m next,” a man shouted as Miss Kelly came back to the counter with more bread.

  “Now, we are very busy and you will have to wait your turn.”

  “But I was next,” the man said, “and that woman was served before me.”

  “So what is it you want?”

  The man had a list of groceries in his hand.

  “Eilis will deal with you now,” Miss Kelly said, “but only after Mrs. Murphy here.”

  “I was before her too,” the man said.

  “I’m afraid you are mistaken,” Miss Kelly said. “Eilis, hurry up now, this man is waiting. No one has all day, so he’s next, after Mrs. Murphy. What price did you charge for that tea?”

  It was like this until almost one o’clock. There was no break and nothing to eat or drink and Eilis was starving. No one was served in turn. Miss Kelly informed some of her customers, including two who, being friends of Rose, greeted Eilis familiarly, that she had lovely fresh tomatoes. She weighed them herself, seeming to be impressed that Eilis knew these customers, telling others firmly, however, that she had no tomatoes that day, none at all. For favoured customers she openly, almost proudly, produced the fresh bread. The problem was, Eilis realized, that there was no other shop in the town that was as well stocked as Miss Kelly’s and open on a Sunday morning, but she also had a sense that people came here out of habit and they did not mind waiting, they enjoyed the crush and the crowd.

  Although she had planned not to mention her new job in Miss Kelly’s over dinner at home that day unless Rose raised the matter first, Eilis could not contain herself and began as soon as they sat down to describe her morning.

  “I went into that shop once,” Rose said, “on my way home from mass and she served Mary Delahunt before me. I turned and walked out. And there was a smell of something. I can’t think what it was. She has a little slave, doesn’t she? She took her out of a convent.”

  “Her father was a nice enough man,” her mother said, “but she had no chance because her mother was, as I told you, Eilis, evil incarnate. I heard that when one of the maids got scalded she wouldn’t even let her go to the doctor. The mother had Nelly working there from the time she could walk. She’s never seen daylight, that’s what’s wrong with her.”

  “Nelly Kelly?” Rose asked. “Is that really her name?”

  “In school they had a different name for her.”

  “What was it?”

  “Everyone called her Nettles Kelly. The nuns couldn’t stop us. I remember her well, she was a year or two behind me. She’d always have five or six girls following behind her coming from the Mercy Convent shouting ‘Nettles.’ No wonder she’s so mad.”

  There was silence for a while as Rose and Eilis took this in.

  “You wouldn’t know whether to laugh or to cry,” Rose said.

  Eilis found as the meal went on that she could do an imitation of Miss Kelly’s voice that made her sister and her mother laugh. She wondered if she was the only one who remembered that Jack, the youngest of her brothers, used to do imitations
of the Sunday sermon, the radio sports commentators, the teachers at school and many characters in the town, and they all used to laugh. She did not know if the other two also realized that this was the first time they had laughed at this table since Jack had followed the others to Birmingham. She would have loved to say something about him, but she knew that it would make her mother too sad. Even when a letter came from him it was passed around in silence. So she continued mocking Miss Kelly, stopping only when someone called for Rose to take her to play golf, leaving Eilis and her mother to clear the table and wash the dishes.

  That evening Eilis called at Nancy Byrne’s at nine, aware that she had not made enough effort with her appearance. She had washed her hair and put on a summer dress, but she thought that she looked dowdy and was resigned to the idea that if Nancy danced more than one dance with George Sheridan then she was going home on her own. She was glad that Rose had not seen her before she left, as she would have made her do something more with her hair and put on some make-up and generally try to look smarter.

  “Now, the rule is,” Nancy said, “that we are not even looking at George Sheridan and he might be with a whole crowd from the rugby club, or he might not even be there at all. They often go to Courtown on a Sunday night, that crowd. So we are to be deep in conversation. And I’m not dancing with anyone else, just in case he came in and saw me. So if someone is coming over to ask us to dance, we just stand up and go to the ladies’.”

  It was clear that Nancy, using help from her sister and her mother, with both of whom she had finally shared the news that she had danced with George Sheridan the previous Sunday, had gone to a great deal of trouble. She had had her hair done the day before. She was wearing a blue dress that Eilis had seen only once before and she was now applying make-up in front of the bathroom mirror as her mother and sister made their way in and out of the room, offering advice and commentary and admiration.

  They walked in silence from Friary Street into Church Street and then around to Castle Street and into the Athenaeum and up the stairs to the hall. Eilis was not surprised at how nervous Nancy was. It was a year since her boyfriend had let her down badly by turning up one night with another girl in this very same hall and staying with the other girl all night, barely acknowledging Nancy’s existence as she sat watching. Later, he had gone to England, coming home briefly only to get married to the girl he had been with that night. It was not just that George Sheridan was handsome and had a car, but he ran a shop that did a thriving business in the Market Square; it was a business he would inherit in full on his mother’s death. For Nancy, who worked in Buttle’s Barley-Fed Bacon behind the counter, going out with George Sheridan was a dream that she did not wish to wake from, Eilis thought, as she and Nancy glanced around the hall, pretending they were not on the lookout for anyone in particular.

  There were some couples dancing and a few men standing near the door.

  “They look like they are at a cattle mart,” Nancy said. “And God, it’s the hair oil I hate.”

  “If one of them comes over, I’ll stand up immediately,” Eilis said, “and you tell them that you have to go with me to the cloakroom.”

  “We should have bottle glasses and buck teeth and have left our hair all greasy,” Nancy said.

  As the place filled up there was no sign of George Sheridan. And even as men crossed the hall to ask women to dance, no one approached either Nancy or Eilis.

  “We’ll get a name for being wallflowers,” Nancy said.

  “You could be called worse,” Eilis said.

  “Oh, you could. You could be called the Courtnacuddy Bus,” Nancy replied.

  Even when they had both stopped laughing and had gone back to looking around the hall, one of them would begin giggling again and it would start the other one off too.

  “We must look mad,” Eilis said.

  Nancy beside her, however, had suddenly become serious. As Eilis looked over at the bar where soft drinks were on sale, she saw that George Sheridan, Jim Farrell and a number of their friends from the rugby club had arrived and there were a number of young women with them. Jim Farrell’s father owned a pub in Rafter Street.

  “That’s it,” Nancy whispered. “I’m going home.”

  “Wait, don’t do that,” Eilis said. “We’ll go to the ladies’ at the end of this set and then discuss what to do.”

  They waited and crossed the floor, empty of dancers; Eilis presumed that George Sheridan had spotted them. In the ladies’ she told Nancy to do nothing, just to wait, and they would go back out when the next dance was in full swing. As they did so, and Eilis glanced over to where George and his friends had been, she caught George’s eye. Nancy’s face, as they searched for somewhere to sit, had turned a blotched red; she looked like someone whom the nuns had told to go and stand outside the door. They sat there without speaking as the dance went on. Everything Eilis thought of saying was ridiculous and so she said nothing, but she was aware that they both must seem a sad sight to anyone who paid any attention to them. She decided that if Nancy made even the weakest suggestion that they should go after this set, then she would agree immediately. Indeed, she longed to be outside already; she knew they would find some way of making a laugh of it later.

  At the end of the set, however, George walked across the hall even before the music began and asked Nancy to dance. He smiled at Eilis as Nancy stood up and she smiled at him in return. As they began to dance, with George chatting easily, Nancy seemed to be making an effort to look cheerful. Eilis looked away in case her watching made Nancy uncomfortable, and then looked at the ground, hoping that no one would ask her to dance. It would be easier now, she thought, if George asked Nancy for the next dance when this set was over and she could slip quietly home.

  Instead, George and Nancy came towards her and said they were going to get a lemonade at the bar and George would like to buy one for Eilis as well. She stood up and walked across the hall with them. Jim Farrell was standing at the bar holding a place for George. Some of their other friends, one or two of whom Eilis knew by name and the others by sight, were close by. As they approached, Jim Farrell turned and kept an elbow on the counter. He looked both Nancy and Eilis up and down without nodding or speaking, and then moved over and said something to George.

  As the music began again, some of their friends took to the floor but Jim Farrell did not move. As George handed the glasses full of lemonade to Nancy and Eilis, he set about introducing them formally to Jim Farrell, who nodded curtly but did not shake hands. George seemed at a loss as he stood sipping his drink. He said something to Nancy and she replied. Then he sipped his drink again. Eilis wondered what he was going to do; it was clear that his friend did not like Nancy or Eilis and had no intention of speaking to them; Eilis wished she had not been brought to the bar like this. She sipped her drink and looked at the ground. When she glanced up, she saw Jim Farrell studying Nancy coldly and then, when he noticed he was being watched by Eilis, he shifted his ground and looked at her, his face expressionless. He was wearing, she saw, an expensive sports jacket and a shirt with a cravat.

  George put the glass on the counter and turned to Nancy, inviting her to dance; he motioned to Jim, as if to suggest that he should do the same. Nancy smiled at George and then at Eilis and Jim, left her drink down and went to the dance floor with him. She seemed relieved and happy. As Eilis looked around, she was aware that she and Jim Farrell were alone at the bar counter and that there was no room at the ladies’ side of the hall. Unless she went to the ladies’ again, or went home, she was trapped. For a second, Jim Farrell looked as though he was stepping forward to ask her to dance. Eilis, since she felt she had no choice, was ready to accept; she did not want to be rude to George’s friend. Just as she was about to accept him, Jim Farrell appeared to think better of it, stepped back and almost imperiously glanced around the hall, ignoring her. He did not look at her again and when the set was over she went and found Nancy and told her quietly that she was leaving and would se
e her soon. She shook hands with George and made the excuse that she was tired, and then walked from the hall with as much dignity as she could.

  The following evening at tea she told her mother and Rose the story. They were interested at first in the news that Nancy had been dancing two Sunday nights in succession with George Sheridan, but they became far more animated when Eilis told them about the rudeness of Jim Farrell.

  “Don’t go near that Athenaeum again,” Rose said.

  “Your father knew his father well,” her mother said. “Years ago. They went to the races together a few times. And your father drank in Farrell’s sometimes. It’s very well kept. And his mother is a very nice woman, she was a Duggan from Glenbrien. It must be the rugby club has him that way, and it must be sad for his parents having a pup for a son because he’s an only child.”

  “He sounds like a pup all right and he looks like one,” Rose said.

  “Well, he was in a bad mood last night anyway,” Eilis said. “That’s all I have to say. I suppose he might think that George should be with someone grander than Nancy.”

  “There’s no excuse for that,” her mother said. “Nancy Byrne is one of the most beautiful girls in this town. George would be very lucky to get her.”

  “I wonder would his mother agree,” Rose said.

  “Some of the shopkeepers in this town,” her mother said, “especially the ones who buy cheap and sell dear, all they have is a few yards of counter and they have to sit there all day waiting for customers. I don’t know why they think so highly of themselves.”

  Although Miss Kelly paid Eilis only seven and sixpence a week for working on Sundays, she often sent Mary to fetch her at other times—once when she wanted to get her hair done without closing the shop and once when she wanted all the tins on the shelves taken down and dusted and then replaced. Each time she gave Eilis two shillings but kept her for hours, complaining about Mary whenever she could. Each time also, as she left, Miss Kelly handed Eilis a loaf of bread, which Eilis knew was stale, to give to her mother.