by Colm Toibin
“She must think we’re paupers,” her mother said. “What would we do with stale bread? Rose will go mad. Don’t go there the next time she sends for you. Tell her you’re busy.”
“But I’m not busy.”
“A proper job will turn up. That’s what I’m praying for every day.”
Her mother made breadcrumbs with the stale bread and roasted stuffed pork. She did not tell Rose where the breadcrumbs came from.
One day at dinnertime Rose, who walked home from the office at one and returned at a quarter to two, mentioned that she had played golf the previous evening with a priest, a Father Flood, who had known their father years before and their mother when she was a young girl. He was home from America on holidays, his first visit since before the war.
“Flood?” her mother asked. “There was a crowd of Floods out near Monageer, but I don’t remember any of them becoming a priest. I don’t know what became of them, you never see any of them now.”
“There’s Murphy Floods,” Eilis said.
“That’s not the same,” her mother replied.
“Anyway,” Rose said, “I invited him in for his tea when he said that he’d like to call on you and he’s coming tomorrow.”
“Oh, God,” her mother said. “What would an American priest like for his tea? I’ll have to get cooked ham.”
“Miss Kelly has the best cooked ham,” Eilis said, laughing.
“No one is buying anything from Miss Kelly,” Rose replied. “Father Flood will eat whatever we give him.”
“Would cooked ham be all right with tomatoes and lettuce, or maybe roast beef, or would he like a fry?”
“Anything will be fine,” Rose said. “With plenty of brown bread and butter.”
“We’ll have it in the dining room, and we’ll use the good china. If I could get a bit of salmon, maybe. Would he eat that?”
“He’s very nice,” Rose said. “He’ll eat anything you put in front of him.”
Father Flood was tall; his accent was a mixture of Irish and American. Nothing he said could convince Eilis’s mother that she had known him or his family. His mother, he said, had been a Rochford.
“I don’t think I knew her,” her mother said. “The only Rochford we knew was old Hatchethead.”
Father Flood looked at her solemnly. “Hatchethead was my uncle,” he said.
“Was he?” her mother asked. Eilis saw how close she was to nervous laughter.
“But of course we didn’t call him that,” Father Flood said. “His real name was Seamus.”
“Well, he was very nice,” her mother said. “Weren’t we awful to call him that?”
Rose poured more tea as Eilis quietly left the room, afraid that if she stayed she would be unable to disguise an urge to begin laughing.
When she returned she realized that Father Flood had heard about her job at Miss Kelly’s, had found out about her pay and had expressed shock at how low it was. He inquired about her qualifications.
“In the United States,” he said, “there would be plenty of work for someone like you and with good pay.”
“She thought of going to England,” her mother said, “but the boys said to wait, that it wasn’t the best time there, and she might only get factory work.”
“In Brooklyn, where my parish is, there would be office work for someone who was hard-working and educated and honest.”
“It’s very far away, though,” her mother said. “That’s the only thing.”
“Parts of Brooklyn,” Father Flood replied, “are just like Ireland. They’re full of Irish.”
He crossed his legs and sipped his tea from the china cup and said nothing for a while. The silence that descended made it clear to Eilis what the others were thinking. She looked across at her mother, who deliberately, it seemed to her, did not return her glance, but kept her gaze fixed on the floor. Rose, normally so good at moving the conversation along if they had a visitor, also said nothing. She twisted her ring and then her bracelet.
“It would be a great opportunity, especially if you were young,” Father Flood said finally.
“It might be very dangerous,” her mother said, her eyes still fixed on the floor.
“Not in my parish,” Father Flood said. “It’s full of lovely people. A lot of life centres round the parish, even more than in Ireland. And there’s work for anyone who’s willing to work.”
Eilis felt like a child when the doctor would come to the house, her mother listening with cowed respect. It was Rose’s silence that was new to her; she looked at her now, wanting her sister to ask a question or make a comment, but Rose appeared to be in a sort of dream. As Eilis watched her, it struck her that she had never seen Rose look so beautiful. And then it occurred to her that she was already feeling that she would need to remember this room, her sister, this scene, as though from a distance. In the silence that had lingered, she realized, it had somehow been tacitly arranged that Eilis would go to America. Father Flood, she believed, had been invited to the house because Rose knew that he could arrange it.
Her mother had been so opposed to her going to England that this new realization came to Eilis as a shock. She wondered if she had not taken the job in the shop and had not told them about her weekly humiliation at Miss Kelly’s hands, might they have been so ready to let this conversation happen. She regretted having told them so much; she had done so mostly because it had made Rose and her mother laugh, brightened a number of meals that they had had with each other, made eating together nicer and easier than anytime since her father had died and the boys had left. It now occurred to her that her mother and Rose did not think her working for Miss Kelly was funny at all, and they offered no word of demurral as Father Flood moved from praising his parish in Brooklyn to saying that he believed he would be able to find Eilis a suitable position there.
In the days that followed no mention was made of Father Flood’s visit or his raising the possibility of her going to Brooklyn, and it was the silence itself that led Eilis to believe that Rose and her mother had discussed it and were in favour of it. She had never considered going to America. Many she knew had gone to England and often came back at Christmas or in the summer. It was part of the life of the town. Although she knew friends who regularly received presents of dollars or clothes from America, it was always from their aunts and uncles, people who had emigrated long before the war. She could not remember any of these people ever appearing in the town on holidays. It was a long journey across the Atlantic, she knew, at least a week on a ship, and it must be expensive. She had a sense too, she did not know from where, that, while the boys and girls from the town who had gone to England did ordinary work for ordinary money, people who went to America could become rich. She tried to work out how she had come to believe also that, while people from the town who lived in England missed Enniscorthy, no one who went to America missed home. Instead, they were happy there and proud. She wondered if that could be true.
Father Flood did not visit again; instead, he wrote a letter to her mother when he returned to Brooklyn, saying that he had spoken, soon after he arrived, to one of his parishioners, a merchant of Italian origin, about Eilis and wanted to let Mrs. Lacey know that there would soon be a position vacant. It would not be in the office, as he had hoped, but on the shop floor of the large store that this gentleman owned and managed. But, he added, he had been assured that, were Eilis to prove satisfactory in her first job, there would be plenty of opportunity for promotion and very good prospects. He would also, he said, be able to provide suitable documentation to satisfy the Embassy, which was often not so easy nowadays, and would, he was sure, be able to find suitable accommodation for Eilis near the church and not far from her place of work.
Her mother handed her the letter when she had it read. Rose had already gone to work. There was silence in the kitchen.
“He seems very genuine,” her mother said. “I’ll say that for him.”
Eilis read the sentence again about the shop floor. S
he presumed that he meant she would work behind a counter. Father Flood did not mention how much she would earn, or how she would raise the money to pay the fare. Instead, he suggested that she should get in touch with the American Embassy in Dublin and ascertain precisely what documents she would require before she travelled so they could all be arranged. As she read and reread, her mother moved about the kitchen with her back to her, saying nothing. Eilis sat at the table, not speaking either, wondering how long it would take her mother to turn towards her and say something, deciding that she would sit and wait, counting each second, knowing that her mother had no real work to do. She was, in fact, Eilis saw, making work for herself so that she would not have to turn.
Finally, her mother turned and sighed.
“Keep that letter safe now,” she said, “and we’ll show it to Rose when she comes in.”
Within weeks, Rose had organized everything, even managing to befriend by telephone a figure in the American Embassy in Dublin who sent the necessary forms and a list of doctors authorized to write a report on Eilis’s general health, and a list of other things the Embassy would require, including a precise offer of work, work that Eilis was singularly qualified to do, a guarantee that she would be looked after financially on her arrival and a number of character references.
Father Flood wrote a formal letter sponsoring Eilis and guaranteeing to take care of her accommodation as well as her general and financial welfare, and on headed notepaper came a letter from Bartocci & Company, Fulton Street, Brooklyn, offering her a permanent position in their main store at the same address and mentioning her bookkeeping skills and general experience. It was signed Laura Fortini; the handwriting, Eilis noted, was clear and beautiful, and even the notepaper itself, its light blue colour, the embossed drawing of a large building over the letterhead, seemed heavier, more expensive, more promising than anything of its kind she had seen before.
It was agreed that her brothers in Birmingham would, between them, pay her passage to New York. Rose would give her money to live on until she was settled in her job. She told the news to a few friends, asking them not to tell anyone else, but Eilis knew that some of Rose’s colleagues at work had heard the phone calls to Dublin; she was aware also that her mother would not be able to keep the news to herself. Thus she felt that she should go and tell Miss Kelly before she heard it from someone else. It was best, she thought, to go during the week, when things were not so busy.
She found Miss Kelly standing behind the counter. Mary was at the top of a ladder stacking packets of marrowfat peas on the higher shelves.
“Oh, you’ve come at the worst time now,” Miss Kelly said. “Just when we thought we would have a bit of peace. Now don’t disturb that Mary one whatever you do.” She inclined her head in the direction of the ladder. “She’d fall as soon as she’d look at you.”
“Well, I just came to say that I’ll be going to America in about a month’s time,” Eilis said. “I’m going to work there and I wanted to give you plenty of notice.”
Miss Kelly stood back from the counter. “Is that right?” she asked.
“But I’ll be here on Sundays of course until I go.”
“Is it a reference you’re looking for?”
“No. Not at all. I just came to let you know.”
“Well, that’s lovely now. So we’ll see you when you come home on holidays, if you’ll still be talking to everyone.”
“I’ll be here on Sunday,” Eilis said.
“Ah, no, we won’t be needing you at all. If you’re going, you’re best to go.”
“But I could come.”
“No, you couldn’t. There’d be too much talk about you and there’d be too much distraction and we’re very busy on a Sunday, as you know, without that.”
“I was hoping I could work until I left.”
“Not here you can’t. So be off with you now. We have plenty of work, more deliveries today and more stacking. And no time for talking.”
“Well, thank you very much.”
“And thank you too.”
As Miss Kelly moved towards the store at the back of the shop, Eilis looked to see if Mary would turn so she could say goodbye to her. Since Mary did not, Eilis quietly left the shop and went home.
Miss Kelly was the only one who mentioned the possibility of her coming home on holidays. No one else mentioned it. Until now, Eilis had always presumed that she would live in the town all her life, as her mother had done, knowing everyone, having the same friends and neighbours, the same routines in the same streets. She had expected that she would find a job in the town, and then marry someone and give up the job and have children. Now, she felt that she was being singled out for something for which she was not in any way prepared, and this, despite the fear it carried with it, gave her a feeling, or more a set of feelings, she thought she might experience in the days before her wedding, days in which everyone looked at her in the rush of arrangements with light in their eyes, days in which she herself was fizzy with excitement but careful not to think too precisely about what the next few weeks would be like in case she lost her nerve.
There was no day that passed without an event. The forms that came from the Embassy were filled in and sent back. She went on the train to Wexford town for what seemed to her a cursory medical examination, the doctor appearing to be satisfied when she told him that no one in her family had suffered from tuberculosis. Father Flood wrote with more details, of where she would stay when she arrived and how close it would be to her place of work; her ticket arrived for the ship to New York, which would leave from Liverpool. Rose gave her some money for clothes and promised to buy her shoes and a complete set of underwear. The house was, she thought, unusually, almost unnaturally happy, and the meals they shared were full of too much talk and laughter. It reminded her of the weeks before Jack had left for Birmingham, when they would do anything to distract themselves from the thought that they were losing him.
One day, when a neighbour called and sat in the kitchen with them having tea, Eilis realized that her mother and Rose were doing everything to hide their feelings. The neighbour, almost casually, as a way of making conversation, said: “You’ll miss her when she’s gone, I’d say.”
“Oh, it’ll kill me when she goes,” her mother said. Her face wore a dark strained look that Eilis had not seen since the months after their father died. Then, in the moments that followed, the neighbour appearing to have been taken aback by her mother’s tone, her mother’s expression became almost darker and she had to stand up and walk quietly out of the room. It was clear to Eilis that she was going to cry. Eilis was so surprised that, instead of following her mother into the hallway or the dining room, she made small talk with their neighbour, hoping her mother would soon return and they could resume what had seemed like an ordinary conversation.
Even when she woke in the night and thought about it, she did not allow herself to conclude that she did not want to go. Instead, she went over all the arrangements and worried about carrying two suitcases with all her clothes without any help, and making sure that she did not lose the handbag that Rose had given her, where she would keep her passport, and the addresses in Brooklyn where she would live and work, and Father Flood’s address in case he did not turn up to meet her as he had promised to do. And money. And her make-up bag. And an overcoat maybe to be carried over her arm, although perhaps she would wear it, she thought, unless it was too hot. And it still might be hot in late September, she had been warned.
She had already packed one case and hoped, as she went over its contents in her mind, that she would not have to open it again. It struck her on one of those nights, as she lay awake, that the next time she would open that suitcase it would be in a different room in a different country, and then the thought came unbidden into her mind that she would be happier if it were opened by another person who could keep the clothes and shoes and wear them every day. She would prefer to stay at home, sleep in this room, live in this house, do without the c
lothes and shoes. The arrangements being made, all the bustle and talk, would be better if they were for someone else, she thought, someone like her, someone the same age and size, who maybe even looked the same as she did, as long as she, the person who was thinking now, could wake in this bed every morning and move as the day went on in these familiar streets and come home to the kitchen, to her mother and Rose.
Even though she let these thoughts run as fast as they would, she still stopped when her mind moved towards real fear or dread or, worse, towards the thought that she was going to lose this world for ever, that she would never have an ordinary day again in this ordinary place, that the rest of her life would be a struggle with the unfamiliar. Downstairs, once Rose and her mother were there, she talked about practical things and remained bright.
One evening, when Rose invited her into her room so that she could choose some pieces of jewellery to bring with her, something new occurred to Eilis that surprised her by its force and clarity. Rose was thirty now, and since it was obvious that their mother could never be left to live alone, not merely because her pension was small but because she would be too lonely without any of them, Eilis’s going, which Rose had organized so precisely, would mean that Rose would not be able to marry. She would have to stay with her mother, living as she was now, working in Davis’s office, playing golf at the weekends and on summer evenings. Rose, she realized, in making it easy for her to go, was giving up any real prospect of leaving this house herself and having her own house, with her own family. Eilis, as she fitted on some necklaces, seated in front of her dressing-table mirror, saw that in the future, as her mother got older and more frail, Rose would have to care for her even more, go up the steep steps of the stairs with trays of food and do the cleaning and cooking when her mother could not.
