Brooklyn

by Colm Toibin

  The following Sunday, Father Flood announced that the parish hall was now ready to run dances to raise funds for charities in the parish, that he had procured Pat Sullivan’s Harp and Shamrock Orchestra and that he would ask the parishioners to spread the word that the first dance would be held on the last Friday of January and then every Friday night after that until further notice.

  When Mrs. Kehoe came briefly into the kitchen that evening, having left her poker session, and sat at the table, the lodgers were discussing the dance.

  “I hope Father Flood knows what he’s doing,” Mrs. Kehoe said. “They ran a dance in that selfsame parish hall after the war and they had to close it because of immorality. Some of the Italians started to come looking for Irish girls.”

  “Well, I don’t see what’s wrong with that,” Diana said. “My father is Italian and I think he met my mother at a dance.”

  “I’m sure he is very nice,” Mrs. Kehoe said, “but after the war some of the Italians were very forward.”

  “They’re lovely-looking,” Patty said.

  “Be that as it may,” Mrs. Kehoe said, “and I’m sure some of them are lovely and all, but from what I heard great care should be taken with many of them. But that’s enough about Italians. It might be better for us all if we changed the subject.”

  “I hope there’s not going to be Irish dancing,” Patty said.

  “Pat Sullivan’s band are lovely,” Sheila Heffernan said. “They can do everything from Irish tunes to waltzes and foxtrots and American tunes.”

  “That’s good for them,” Patty said, “as long as I can sit it out for the céilí stuff. God, it should be abolished. In this day and age!”

  “If you’re not lucky,” Miss McAdam said, “you’ll be sitting down all night, unless of course it’s ladies’ choice.”

  “That’s enough about the dance,” Mrs. Kehoe said. “I shouldn’t have come into the kitchen at all. Just be careful. That’s all I have to say. You have your whole life ahead of you.”

  Over the next while, as the night of the dance approached, the house broke into two factions: the first, which consisted of Patty and Diana, wanted Eilis to come with them to a restaurant where they would meet other people going to the dance, but the others—Miss McAdam and Sheila Heffernan—insisted that the restaurant in question was really a saloon bar and that the people who would gather there often were not sober or indeed decent. They wanted Eilis to go with them directly from Mrs. Kehoe’s house to the parish hall only as a way of supporting a good cause and to leave as early as was polite.

  “One of the things I don’t miss about Ireland is the cattle mart on a Friday and Saturday night, and I’d be happy to stay single rather than have half-drunk fellows with terrible hair oil pushing me around.”

  “Where I’m from,” Miss McAdam said, “we didn’t go out at all and none of us were any the worse for it.”

  “And how did you meet fellows?” Diana asked.

  “Will you look at her?” Patty interjected. “She’s never met a fellow in her life.”

  “Well, when I do,” Miss McAdam said, “it will not be in a saloon bar.”

  In the end Eilis waited at home with Miss McAdam and Sheila Heffernan and they did not set out for the parish hall until after ten o’clock. She noticed that both of them were carrying high-heeled shoes in their bags that they would change into once they arrived. Both, she saw, had backcombed their hair and were wearing make-up and lipstick. When she saw them first she was afraid that she herself would look dowdy beside them; she felt uncomfortable at spending the rest of the evening, no matter how short their stay in the parish hall, in their company. They seemed to have made so much effort, whereas she had merely tidied herself and put on the only good dress that she owned and a brand-new pair of nylon stockings. She decided, as they walked to the hall through the freezing night, that she would look carefully at what other women were wearing at the dance and make sure the next time that she did not look too plain.

  As they approached she felt nothing but dread and wished she could have found an excuse to stay at home. Patty and Diana had laughed so much before they left, running up and down the stairs, forcing the others to admire them as they travelled from floor to floor of the house, even knocking on Mrs. Kehoe’s door before they finally departed so that she could see them. Eilis was glad she had not gone with them, but now, in the strange tense silence that developed between Miss McAdam and Sheila Heffernan as they entered the hall, she felt their nervousness and was sorry for them and sorry too that she would have to stay with them for the evening and leave when they wanted to.

  The hall was almost empty; once they had paid they went to the ladies’ cloakroom, where Miss McAdam and Sheila Heffernan checked themselves in the mirrors and applied more make-up and lipstick, offering Eilis lipstick and mascara as well. As all three looked in the mirror, Eilis realized that her hair looked terrible. Even if she were never to go to a dance again, she thought, she would have to do something about it. Her dress, which Rose had helped her to buy, also looked terrible. Since she had some money saved, she thought that she should buy some new clothes, but she knew that she would never easily be able to do so alone and that her two companions would be as little use to her as Patty and Diana. The first pair were too formal and stiff in their attire and the second too modern and loud. She determined that once her exams were over in May she would spend time looking at stores and prices and trying to work out what sort of American clothes would suit her best.

  When they walked out into the hall and across the bare boards to sit on benches on the opposite side, passing a number of middle-aged couples waltzing to the music, they saw Father Flood, who came and shook hands with them.

  “We’re expecting a crowd,” he said. “But they never come when you want them.”

  “Oh, we know where they are,” Miss McAdam said. “Getting Dutch courage.”

  “Ah, well, it’s Friday night, I suppose.”

  “I hope they won’t be drunk,” Miss McAdam said.

  “Oh, we have good men on the door. And we hope it will be a good night.”

  “If you opened a bar you’d make a fortune,” Sheila Heffernan said.

  “Don’t think I haven’t thought of it,” Father Flood replied and rubbed his hands together, laughing as he moved away from them, crossing the dance floor towards the main entrance.

  Eilis looked at the musicians. There was a man with an accordion who seemed very sad and wistful as he played the slow waltz and a younger man playing the drums and an older man at the back with a double bass. She noticed some brass instruments on stage and a microphone set up for a singer, so she presumed that when the hall filled there would be more musicians.

  Sheila Heffernan fetched a lemon soda for each of them and they quietly sipped their drinks and sat on the bench as the hall filled up. There was still no sign, however, of Patty and Diana and their group.

  “They probably found a better dance somewhere else,” Sheila said.

  “It would be too much to expect for them to support their own parish,” Miss McAdam added.

  “And I heard that some dances on the Manhattan side of the bridge can be very dangerous,” Sheila Heffernan said.

  “You know, the sooner this is over and I am at home in my own warm bed the happier I’ll be,” Miss McAdam said.

  At first Eilis did not see Patty and Diana but spotted instead a crowd of young people who had come noisily into the hall. A few of the men were dressed in brightly coloured suits with their hair slicked back with oil. One or two were remarkably good-looking, like film stars. Eilis could imagine what they would think of her and her two companions as the new arrivals took in the hall, their gaze shiny, excited, brilliant, full of expectation. And then she saw Diana and Patty among them, both looking radiant, everything about them perfect including their warm smiles.

  Eilis would have given anything now to have been with them, dressed like them, to be glamorous herself, too easily distracted by the jokes
and smiles of those around her to watch anyone with the same breath-filled intensity as she was watching them. She was afraid to turn to check on Miss McAdam and Sheila Heffernan; she knew that they might share her feelings, but she was aware also how hard they would try to suggest that they deeply disapproved of the new arrivals. She could not bear to look at her two fellow lodgers, afraid that she would see something of her own gawking unease in their faces, her own sense of being unable to look as though she were enjoying herself.

  Once the music changed, no more Irish tunes were performed. The accordion player began to play slow tunes on the saxophone, tunes that most of the dancers seemed to recognize. By now, the hall was full. The dancers moved slowly, and they appeared to Eilis, in how they responded to the music, more elegant than the dancers at home. As the rhythms grew slower, she was surprised at how close some of them danced; some of the women seemed almost wrapped around their partners. She saw Diana and Patty move with confidence and skill and noticed that Diana shut her eyes as she came close to her fellow lodgers, as though she meant to concentrate better on the music and the tall man with whom she was dancing and the pleasure she was taking in the night. Once she had passed, Miss McAdam said she thought it was time for them to go.

  As they made their way across the hall to get their coats, Eilis wished they had waited until the set was over so that they might not be seen making such an early departure. As they walked home silently, she did not know how she felt. The tunes the band had played were so soft and beautiful. The way the couples who danced were dressed was to her eyes so fashionable and so right. She knew that it was something she would never be able to do.

  “That Diana should be ashamed of herself,” Miss McAdam said. “God only knows what time she’ll come in at.”

  “Is that her boyfriend?” Eilis asked.

  “Who knows?” Sheila Heffernan said. “She has a different one for every day of the week and two on Sundays.”

  “He looks lovely,” Eilis said. “He was a great dancer.”

  Neither of her companions replied. Miss McAdam quickened her pace and forced the other two to follow. Eilis was pleased at what she had said even though it was clear that she had annoyed them. She wondered if she could think of something stronger to say so that they might not ask her to accompany them to the dance the following week. Instead, she determined that she would buy something, even just new shoes, which would make her feel more like the girls she had seen dancing. She thought for a moment that she would ask Patty and Diana for advice about clothes and make-up but reasoned that that might be going too far. As Miss McAdam and Sheila Heffernan barely said goodnight to her when they reached home, she decided that, no matter what, she would never go to a dance with them again.

  At work on Monday, Miss Fortini was waiting for her. Eilis thought at first that she had done something wrong, as Miss Fortini asked her and Miss Delano, one of the other sales assistants, to follow her to Miss Bartocci’s office. When they entered the room, Miss Bartocci seemed grave as she signalled to them to sit down opposite her.

  “There is going to be a big change in the store,” she said, “because there is a change going on outside the store. Coloured people are moving into Brooklyn, more and more of them.”

  As she looked at all of them, Eilis could not tell whether they viewed this as a good thing for business or a piece of ominous news.

  “We’re going to welcome coloured women into our store as shoppers. And we’re starting with nylon stockings. This is going to be the first store on this street to sell Red Fox stockings at cheap prices and soon we’re going to add Sepia and Coffee.”

  “These are colours,” Miss Fortini said.

  “Coloured women want Red Fox stockings and we are selling them and you two are going to be polite to anyone who comes into this store, coloured or white.”

  “Both of them are always very polite,” Miss Fortini said, “but I’ll be watching once the first notice goes in the window.”

  “We may lose customers,” Miss Bartocci interjected, “but we’re going to sell to anyone who will buy and at the best prices.”

  “But the Red Fox stockings will be apart, away from the other normal stockings,” Miss Fortini said. “At least at first. And you two will be at that counter, Miss Lacey and Miss Delano, and your job is to pretend that it’s no big deal.”

  “The sign is going in the window this morning,” Miss Bartocci added. “And you stand there and smile. Is that agreed?”

  Eilis and her companion looked at one another and nodded.

  “You probably won’t be busy today,” Miss Bartocci said, “but we’re going to hand leaflets out in the right places and by the end of the week you won’t have a moment if we’re lucky.”

  Miss Fortini then led them back to the shop floor, where to the left at a long table men were piling up new packages with nylon stockings that were almost red in colour.

  “Why did they choose us?” Miss Delano asked her.

  “They must think we are nice,” Eilis said.

  “You’re Irish, that makes you different.”

  “And what about you?”

  “I’m from Brooklyn.”

  “Well, maybe you are nice.”

  “Maybe I’m just easy to kick around. Wait until my dad hears about this.”

  Eilis saw that Miss Delano had perfectly plucked eyebrows. She had an image of her in front of the mirror for hours with a tweezers.

  All day they stood at the counter chatting quietly, but no one approached them to look at the red-coloured nylon stockings. It was only the next day that Eilis spotted two middle-aged coloured women coming into the store and being approached by Miss Fortini and directed towards her and Miss Delano. She found herself staring at the two women and then, when she checked herself, looked around the store to find that everyone else was staring at them. The two women were, she saw when she looked at them again, beautifully dressed, both in cream-coloured woollen coats and each chatting casually to the other as though there were nothing unusual about their arrival in the store.

  Miss Delano, she observed, stood back as they came close, but Eilis stayed where she was as the two women began to examine the nylon stockings, looking at different sizes. She studied their painted fingernails and then their faces; she was ready to smile at them if they looked at her. But they did not once glance up from the stockings and, even as they selected a number of pairs and handed them to her, they did not catch her eye. She saw Miss Fortini watching her across the store as she added up what they owed and showed it to them. As she was handed the money, she noticed how white the inside of the woman’s hand was against the dark skin on the back of her hand. She took the money as busily as she could and put it in the container and sent it to the cash department.

  As she waited for the receipt and the change to be returned, her two customers continued talking to each other as though no one else existed. Despite the fact that they were middle-aged, Eilis thought that they were glamorous and had taken great care with their appearance, their hair perfect, their clothes beautiful. She could not tell if either of them was wearing make-up; she could smell perfume but did not know what the scent was. When she handed them the change and the nylon stockings wrapped carefully in brown paper, she thanked them but they did not reply, merely took the change and the receipt and the package and moved elegantly towards the door.

  As the week went on more of them came and as each one entered Eilis noticed a change in the atmosphere in the store, a stillness, a watchfulness; no one else appeared to move when these women moved in case they would get in their way; the other assistants would look down and seem busy and then glance up in the direction of the counter where the stockings in Red Fox were heaped before looking down again. Miss Fortini, however, never lifted her eyes from the scene at the counter. Each time the new customers approached, Miss Delano stood back and let Eilis serve them, but if a second set of customers came she moved forward as though it were part of some arrangement. Not once did a colo
ured woman come into the store alone, and most who came did not look at Eilis or address her directly.

  The few who did speak to her used tones of such elaborate politeness that they made her feel awkward and shy. When the new colours of Coffee and Sepia came it was her job to point out to the customers that these were lighter colours but most of them ignored her. By the end of each of these days she felt exhausted and found her lectures in the evening almost relaxing, relieved that there was something to take her mind off the fierce tension in the store, which lay heaviest around her counter. She wished she had not been singled out to stand at this counter and wondered if, in time, she would be moved to another part of the store.

  Eilis loved her room, loved putting her books at the table opposite the window when she came in at night and then getting into her pyjamas and the dressing gown she had bought in one of the sales and her warm slippers and spending an hour or more before she went to bed looking over the lecture notes and then rereading the manuals on bookkeeping and accounting she had bought. Her only problem remained the law lectures. She enjoyed watching the gestures that Mr. Rosenblum made and the way he spoke, sometimes acting out an entire case for them, the litigants vividly described even if they were a company, but neither she nor any of the other students she spoke to knew what was expected of them, how this might appear as a question in an examination paper. Since Mr. Rosenblum knew so much she wondered if he might expect all of them to have the same detailed knowledge of cases and what they meant, and precedents, and the judgments, prejudices and peculiarities of individual judges.