by Colm Toibin
“I’m going to keep the basement locked in future,” Mrs. Kehoe said as though speaking to Miss McAdam alone. “You wouldn’t know who would be going down there.”
“You are very wise,” Miss McAdam said.
As Eilis made her supper, Mrs. Kehoe and Miss McAdam treated her as though she were a ghost.
Eilis’s mother wrote and mentioned how lonely she was and how long the day was and how hard the night. She said that neighbours looked in on her all the time and people called after tea but she had run out of things to say to them. Eilis wrote to her a number of times; she told her mother all the news about the summer styles in Bartocci’s and other stores on Fulton Street and about preparing for her exams, which would come in May, saying she was studying hard because if she passed she would be a qualified bookkeeper.
She never mentioned Tony in any of her letters home and she wondered if, by now, her mother, in clearing out Rose’s room or in receiving what was in her desk at the office, had found and read her letters to Rose. She saw Tony every day, sometimes merely meeting him outside the college and travelling with him on the trolley-car and letting him walk her as far as Mrs. Kehoe’s. Since the night he had spent in her room everything was different between them. She felt that he was more relaxed, more willing to be silent and not trying to impress her so much or make jokes. And every time she saw him waiting for her, she felt that they had become closer. Every time they kissed, or even brushed against each other as they walked along the street, she was reminded of that night they had been together.
Once she discovered that she was not pregnant, she thought of the night with pleasure, especially after she had returned to the priest, who somehow managed to imply that what had happened between her and Tony was not hard to understand, despite the fact that it was wrong, and was maybe a sign from God that they should consider getting married and raising a family. He seemed so easy to talk to the second time that she was tempted to tell him the whole story and ask him what she should do about her mother, whose letters to her were increasingly sad, the handwriting at times wandering strangely across the page, almost illegible, but she left the confession box without saying anything more.
One Sunday after mass, as she was walking out of the church with Sheila Heffernan, Eilis noticed that Father Flood, who often stood in front of the church after mass greeting his parishioners, had averted his eyes and moved into the shadows when they approached and was soon speaking to a number of women with immense concentration. She waited behind only to find that the priest, having spotted her, turned his back and walked away from her quickly. It occurred to her immediately that Mrs. Kehoe had spoken to him and that she should go to see him as soon as possible before he did something unthinkable such as write to her mother about her, although she had no idea what she would say to him.
Thus after lunch with Tony and his family, she made an arrangement to see Tony later, but said that she had to go now and study. She refused to allow him to come on the subway with her. She went straight from the subway station to Father Flood’s house.
It was only when she was sitting in the front parlour waiting for him that it struck her that she could not easily mention Mrs. Kehoe, she would have to wait for him to do so. If he did not raise the subject, she thought, she could talk about her mother and maybe even discuss the possibility of moving into the office at Bartocci’s were a vacancy to arise after she passed her bookkeeping exams. As she heard footsteps approaching in the hallway, she knew she had a choice. She could appear humble before him and imply an abject apology even if she did not admit everything, or she could model herself on Rose, stand up now as Rose might have and speak to Father Flood as though she were entirely incapable of any wrongdoing.
Father Flood seemed uneasy when he came into the room and did not immediately catch her eye.
“I hope I am not disturbing you now, Father,” she said.
“Oh, no, not at all. I was just reading the paper.”
She knew that it was important to speak now before he did.
“I don’t know if you’ve heard from my mother but I have had letters and she seems not to be well at all.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Father Flood said. “You know I did think it must be hard for her.”
Whatever way he looked at her, he managed to let her know that he meant more than he said, that he was suggesting it might be hard for her mother not only losing Rose but having a daughter who would take a man home to her room for the night.
Eilis now held his gaze and left enough silence for him to know that she had understood the implications of his words but had no intention of giving them any further consideration.
“As you know, I hope to get my exams next month and this would mean that I would be a qualified bookkeeper. I have some money saved and I thought I might go home, just to see my mother, for as long as Bartocci’s would let me have unpaid leave. Also, like many of the other lodgers, I have been having difficulty with Mrs. Kehoe and when I come back from Ireland I might consider changing my lodgings.”
“She’s very nice, Mrs. Kehoe,” Father Flood said. “There aren’t many Irish places like that now. In the old days there used to be more.”
Eilis did not reply.
“So you want me to talk to Bartocci?” he asked. “How long would you like to go for?”
“A month,” Eilis said.
“And you would come back and work on the shop floor until a job in the office came up?”
“Yes.”
He nodded his head and seemed to be thinking about something.
“Would you like me to talk to Mrs. Kehoe as well?” he asked.
“I thought you already had.”
“Not since Rose died,” Father Flood said. “I’m not sure I have seen her since then.”
Eilis studied his face but she could not tell whether it was true or not.
“Would you not make it up with her?” Father Flood asked.
“How would I do that?”
“She’s very fond of you.”
Eilis said nothing.
“I’ll tell you what,” Father Flood said. “I’ll square Bartocci if you make it up with Ma Kehoe.”
“How would I do that?” she repeated.
“Be nice to her.”
Before she had seen Father Flood, it had not occurred to Eilis that she might go home for a brief stay. But once it had been said and did not sound ridiculous and had met with Father Flood’s approval, then it became a plan, something that she was determined to do. At lunchtime the following day she went to a travel agent and found prices for liners crossing the Atlantic. She would wait until her exam results came out, but once she knew them she would go home for a month; it would take five or six days each way, so she would have two and half weeks with her mother.
Although she wrote to her mother later that week she did not mention anything about her plans to go home. When she saw Father Flood in the department store one day she knew that he was there on her behalf because he winked at her as he passed and she hoped he would have news for her soon.
On Friday, when Tony had walked her home after the dance, she found a letter from Father Flood that had been delivered by hand. Mrs. Kehoe soon arrived into the kitchen to announce that she was about to make tea and that she hoped Eilis would join her. Eilis smiled warmly at Mrs. Kehoe and said that she would love that and then went to her room and opened the letter. The Bartoccis, Father Flood said, could offer her one month’s unpaid leave, the date to be arranged with Miss Fortini, and, if she passed her exams, they hoped they could offer her a job in the office over the next six months. She left the letter on the bed and went upstairs to find her tea almost poured.
“Would you feel safe if I took the lock off the basement gate?” Mrs. Kehoe asked her. “I didn’t know what to do so I asked that nice Sergeant Mulhall whose wife plays poker with me and he said that he would have his officers keep a special watch on it and report on any untoward activity down there.”
�
��Oh, that’s a great idea, Mrs. Kehoe,” Eilis said. “You should thank him on behalf of all of us the next time you see him.”
She hoped that the law exam would be as easy as the last time. And she was happy with the work she had done in all the other subjects. As part of the final exam, however, every student would be given all the details of the annual life of a company, rent and heat and light, wages, the fact that machinery and other assets might devalue each year, debt, capital investment and tax. On the other side, there would be sales, money coming in from a number of sources, be they wholesale or retail. And all of this would have to be entered into ledgers in the correct column, it would have to be done neatly so that at an annual general meeting when the board and shareholders of a company wanted to see clearly how profit or loss had been made, they could do so from these ledgers. Anyone who failed this part of the exam, they were told, would not get a passing mark even if they did well in other papers. They would have to repeat the entire exam.
One evening close to the exams, when Tony was walking her home, Eilis told him about her plan to go home for a month once the results came. She had already written to her mother telling her the news. Tony said nothing to her, but, when they arrived at Mrs. Kehoe’s, he asked her to walk with him around the block. His face was pale and he seemed serious and did not look at her directly as he spoke.
When they were away from Mrs. Kehoe’s he sat on a stoop where there was no one, leaving her standing against the railings. She knew that he would be upset about her going like this but was ready to explain to him that he had family in Brooklyn and he did not know what it was like to be away from home. She was prepared to tell him that he would go home too for a visit under similar circumstances.
“Marry me before you go back,” he said almost under his breath.
“What did you say?” She went to the stoop and sat beside him.
“If you go, you won’t come back.”
“I’m just going for a month, I told you.”
“Marry me before you go back.”
“You don’t trust me to come back.”
“I read the letter your brother wrote. I know how hard it would be for you to go home and then leave again. I know it would be hard for me. I know what a good person you are. I would live in fear of getting a letter from you explaining that your mother could not be left alone.”
“I promise you I will come back.”
Each time he said “marry me” he looked away from her, mumbling the words as though he were talking to himself. Now he turned and looked at her clearly.
“I don’t mean in a church and I don’t mean we live together as man and wife and we don’t have to tell anybody. It can be just between the two of us and we can get married in a church when we decide after you come back.”
“Can you get married just like that?” she asked.
“Sure you can. You have to give them notice and I’ll get a list of things we need to do.”
“Why do you want me to do it?”
“It will just be something between us.”
“But why do you want it?”
When he spoke now he had tears in his eyes. “Because if we don’t do it, I’m going to go crazy.”
“And we’ll tell no one?”
“No one. We’ll take a half-day off work, that’s all.”
“And will I wear a ring?”
“You can if you want, but if you don’t that’s fine. All this could, if you wanted, be just something private between the two of us.”
“Would a promise not be the same?”
“If you can promise, then you can easily do this,” he said.
He arranged a date soon after her exams and they set about making all the preparations and filling out the forms that were required. The Sunday before the date she went as usual to his family for lunch. As she sat down she felt that Tony had told his mother, or that his mother had guessed something. There was a new tablecloth on the table, and the way his mother was dressed suggested an important occasion. Then when Tony’s father came in with his three brothers she saw that they were all wearing jackets and ties, which they did not normally do. Once they sat down to eat, she noticed that Frank was unusually quiet at the beginning and then every time he tried to speak the others interrupted him before he could start.
Several times more, in the course of the meal, when he opened his mouth to say something he was stopped.
Eventually, Eilis insisted that she needed to hear what he had to say.
“When we’re all in Long Island,” he said, “and when you have your house there, will you make them build me a room so I can come and stay with you when they’re all making me miserable?”
Tony, Eilis saw, had his head down.
“Of course, Frank. And you will be able to come any time you like.”
“That’s all I wanted to say.”
“Grow up, Frank,” Tony said.
“Grow up, Frank,” Laurence repeated.
“Yeah, Frank,” Maurice added.
“See?” Frank motioned to Eilis and pointed at his three brothers. “That is what I have to tolerate.”
“Don’t worry,” Eilis said. “I’ll deal with them.”
At the end of the meal, as the dessert was served, Tony’s father produced special glasses and opened a bottle of Prosecco. He proposed that they drink for a safe journey and a safe return for Eilis. She wondered if it was still possible that Tony had told them nothing about the wedding, just about her plans to go home for a month; it struck her as unlikely that he would have let Frank know, unless Frank had overheard. Maybe they were just having a special lunch because she was going home, she thought.
In the good cheer that followed the dessert she almost began to hope that he had told them that he and she were getting married.
He arranged the ceremony for two o’clock in the afternoon a week before she was to leave. The exams had gone well and she was almost certain that she would qualify. Because other couples to be married came with family and friends, their ceremony seemed brisk and over quickly and caused much curiosity among those waiting because they had come alone.
On their journey to Coney Island on the train that afternoon Tony raised the question for the first time of when they might marry in church and live together.
“I have money saved,” he said, “so we could get an apartment and then move to the house when it’s ready.”
“I don’t mind,” she said. “I wish we were going home together now.”
He touched her hand.
“So do I,” he said. “And the ring looks great on your finger.”
She looked down at the ring.
“I’d better remember to take it off before Mrs. Kehoe sees it.”
The ocean was rough and grey and the wind blew white billowing clouds quickly across the sky. They moved slowly along the boardwalk and down the pier, where they stood watching the fishermen. As they walked back and sat eating hot dogs at Nathan’s, Eilis spotted someone at the next table checking out her wedding ring. She smiled to herself.
“Will we ever tell our children that we did this?” she asked.
“When we are old maybe and have run out of other stories,” Tony said. “Or maybe we’ll save it up for some anniversary.”
“I wonder what they’ll think of it.”
“The movie I’m taking you to is called The Belle of New York. They’ll believe that bit. But the idea that, when the movie was over, we took the subway home and I dropped you off at Mrs. Kehoe’s. They won’t believe that.”
When they finished eating, they walked together towards the subway and waited for the train to take them into the city.
Part Four
Her mother showed Eilis Rose’s bedroom, which was filled with light from the morning sun. She had left everything, she said, exactly as it was, including all of Rose’s clothes in the wardrobe and in the chest of drawers.
“I had the windows cleaned and the curtains washed and I dusted the room myself and swep
t it out, but other than that it’s exactly the same,” her mother said.
The house itself did not seem strange; Eilis noted only its solid, familiar aura, the lingering smell of cooked food, the shadows, the sense of her mother’s vivid presence. But nothing had prepared her for the quietness of Rose’s bedroom and she felt almost nothing as she stood looking at it. She wondered if her mother wanted her to cry now, or had left the room as it was so she could feel even more deeply Rose’s death. She did not know what to say.
“And some day now,” her mother said, “we can go through the clothes. Rose had just bought a new winter coat and we’ll see if it suits you. She had lovely things.”
Eilis suddenly felt immensely tired and thought that she should go to bed once they had eaten breakfast but she knew that her mother had been planning this moment when they would both stand in this doorway together and contemplate the room.
“You know, I sometimes think she’s still alive,” her mother said. “If I hear the slightest sound upstairs, I often think it must be Rose.”
As they ate breakfast Eilis wished she could think of something more to say but it was hard to speak since her mother seemed to have prepared in advance every word that she said.
“I have arranged a wreath to be made specially for you to leave on her grave and we can go out in a few days if the weather keeps up and then we can let them know it’s time to put Rose’s name and her dates below your father’s.”
Eilis wondered for a moment what might happen were she to interrupt her mother and say: “I am married.” She thought her mother would have a way of not hearing her, or of pretending that she had not spoken. Or else, she imagined, the glass in the window might break.
By the time she managed to say that she was tired and would need to lie down for a while, her mother had not asked her one question about her time in America, or even her trip home. Just as her mother seemed to have prepared things to say and show to her, Eilis had been planning how this first day would go. She had planned to give an account of how much more smooth the crossing from New York to Cobh had been than her first voyage from Liverpool, and how much she had enjoyed sitting up on deck taking in the sun. She had planned also to show her mother the letter from Brooklyn College telling her that she had passed her exams and would, in time, be sent a certificate to say that she was a qualified bookkeeper. She had also bought her mother a cardigan and scarf and some stockings, but her mother had almost absent-mindedly left them aside, saying that she would open them later.
