by Lia Mills
A whiff from a drain checked my enthusiasm. Not even the most passionate Dubliner could admire the city’s smells. Florrie devoted hours to concocting tricks to defeat them. She made pomanders, lotions and soaps, shaved lemon peel into the water our handkerchiefs were boiled in. Her latest venture was scented candles, but Mother put a quick stop to that, afraid for our lives if we left unattended flames around the house.
I turned left on to Parnell Street, then right on to Gardiner Street, with a vague notion of aiming for the river, where a person might reasonably stand idle at a quay wall and watch the water and the birds, the movement of ships and barges. So many people, so much industry – a reproach to my aimless, time-wasting existence. I envied Liam his easy entry to work in Dad’s firm. He had a purpose and a pattern for his days. I’d none for mine. I was left casting around for something to occupy my mind while I endured Mother’s many schemes for my improvement. I could read books ’til my eyes were near falling out of my head, but to what end? I loved the discipline of chasing an idea, assembling evidence, constructing an argument for college essays. I loved the almost physical sensation of learning, an expansive stirring and waking in my mind. When Professor Hayden suggested I go on for a Master’s degree, I was glad of the chance to stay in college a little longer, while I made up my mind what to do in life. I knew I was expected to marry, but suppose I never met anyone I wanted? Suppose no one ever wanted me?
My schoolfriend Frieda Leamy had trained as a nurse after school, and Mother hadn’t spoken well of her since. Mind you, she’d never been entirely happy about Frieda, whose father was a draper. Frieda’s face was spoiled by a purple birthmark that reached from one eyebrow to her collar-bone, as though she’d been scalded. It would put off the paying customers, Mother said, no wonder she needed to do something else with herself. But the truth was that Frieda had no interest in the shop, and now she was doing something she loved.
Eva thought I’d like teaching, but I couldn’t see myself standing up in front of crowds of people to speak. I liked learning for its own sake, and if that was indulgent or impractical, Professor Hayden thought no less of me for it. I still smarted from her perfunctory handshake, which made me feel like someone she used to know but no longer took an interest in.
A disturbance of air blurred in an arc in front of me. A child swinging out of a lamp-post on a rope just missed catching me with her feet. She bumped to a standstill and grinned. Her face was ruddy and freckled. She held out her rope. ‘Have a go, missis?’ A swarm of children on the step of a doorless house jeered me. I considered them with a mean eye, then stuck out my tongue. They roared and applauded. The tips of a few pink tongues poked back.
An empty dray drawn by two black horses lumbered towards us on loud, iron-rimmed wheels. The horses’ hairy feet were heavy and slow, their breathing laboured in unison, as though, together, they made a single funereal beast. The child beside me hopped from one leg to the other, her mop of brown hair flopping in time to their steps. Looking at her, something in my own ribs rose to the memory of how it felt to launch myself into the air and fly around the post before spinning back to earth. Liam and I used to do it, whenever we managed to sneak away from the house to play on more casual streets than our own – back in the days when we barely needed words to know what was in the other’s mind.
Rounding the Custom House, I was assailed by a low-tide stink of fish off the river. Seagulls crowded the sky, whinging and giving out. I was glad to turn back on to Beresford Place, where the windows of Liberty Hall were littered with green anti-recruitment posters. Good for them.
A little way along Abbey Street, near the paper stores, a small crowd was mocking a white-haired man on a step. He yelled back at them. He’d a bell in his hand he kept ringing. I couldn’t hear what he said.
‘What is it?’ I asked an old woman who held the skinny bowl of a clay pipe near her chin, between a finger and a thumb. The stem of the pipe ran into the many grubby folds and creases of her mouth.
She looked at me with lively eyes. Her lips parted with a sucking sound and out came the pipe, causing her face to collapse around her chin. ‘It’s them vigilants as want us all to go round with our legs crossed and our knees in a knot, and the English papers banned because of their filth. Sure, why else would we read them at all?’
I moved away from the poison of her breath.
I dreaded Mr Hickey, the dentist, pulling out my own bad tooth, not only because it would hurt, but because Mother said it was a slippery slope. She should know – she was a martyr to her teeth. Lockie had only the front ones left, four top and five bottom, and a pair she called gnashers at the back. Enough to be going on with, she said, trying to cheer me up.
A throb in the bad tooth sent a bitter taste through my mouth. I put a hand to my cheek to quell it. I’d forgotten to ask Mother for the money to pay the dentist. I could go home and hurry back, but his rooms were two short streets away and by now every step was driving a searing pain through my cheek and into my ear. I’d go along early and wait, beg his indulgence about the money. He knew Mother well; he’d surely let me put the visit on account.
I was near crying by the time the Hickeys’ maid answered their door and let me into the waiting room. I apologized for being early. ‘Sit yourself down. I’ll tell him you’re here,’ she said, and went away. I supposed she saw people in a similar state, or worse, every day of the week.
Eventually Mr Hickey called me through. I hadn’t been in his consulting room for years. It hadn’t changed. A noxious smell I couldn’t identify spread across the floor of my mind. I avoided looking at a chipped enamel dish with steel instruments, a pile of cut flannel, an angled light. His wife busied herself at a cupboard in the corner. She looked up and gave me a brief smile with little comfort in it.
The pain was overlaid by fright as I sat into the reclining chair, but there was no backing out now, with Mr Hickey looming over me. I’d forgotten how much I disliked his thick fingers, or the bushy yellow moustache that lay along his narrow lip. He wrapped a finger in a piece of gauze and poked at the tooth. I winced away from his hand.
He shook his head, scolding either me or the tooth. ‘That fellow will have to go,’ he said. ‘You stay good and quiet, or I might pull the wrong one out.’ He chortled.
‘Will it hurt?’
‘Not a bit.’ His smile showed yellow teeth, big and square and strong-looking. He waved a rubber tube. ‘I’ll give you the gas.’ He patted my knee, glanced over at his wife. ‘Marguerite, I wonder would you …’
I didn’t catch what he asked her for, but she went out of the room, leaving the door ajar. I watched her go with envy. Not having much option, I settled to my fate and the mask he held to my face.
‘You won’t feel a thing.’
There was a thick smell of rubber, a green-smelling gas. I struggled on the first few breaths and then it was easy and slow and Mr Hickey became something marvellous, a fine fellow altogether. The hairs that grew from his ears made me want to laugh, the idea of touching them threatened to give me the giggles. His hand arrived near my knee, a curious pleasant weight. Thoughts too heavy to speak formed in my mind and my knee was getting ready to answer his hand when Mrs Hickey came fussing back. ‘I couldn’t find it – is that not enough of that now?’ Her voice boomed and stretched away, then snapped back to a point. Their voices swam, there were loud creaks, he was twisting something over and back against the stretched inside of my cheek. It creaked loud in my ear and then there was blood in my mouth and a nasty-tasting rag to bite on.
‘Look at that!’ Mr Hickey gazed with admiration at a disgusting, yellowed molar. A sac of greyish jelly wobbled at the end of a sharp-looking root. ‘An abscess,’ he said. ‘No wonder it pained you. We’re lucky it didn’t burst. You’ll be right as rain, now, once and you keep that socket clean and dry until it heals.’
Mrs Hickey passed me a rolled plug of cotton. ‘Bite down on that and hold still, as long as you can. Then another.’ She gave me a
packet with a half a dozen or so more plugs. ‘Your sister’s here.’
Florrie waited in the hall, looking cross. She held an envelope addressed to Mr Hickey. ‘You might have told us you were making your own way here, Katie. Mother sent me to apologize if you’d forgotten. Or to pay if you hadn’t.’
Mrs Hickey patted my arm. ‘There, now.’ She took the envelope from Florrie. ‘You’d best find a cab to take her home, she’s a tad woozy.’
In the cab Florrie started on at me with questions, but I shook my head and gestured at my mouth. I couldn’t say a single intelligible thing.
‘You’ve blood on your chin.’ She pointed to her own face to show me where. I held up a finger and she guided it into place on my chin and dabbed it. ‘There.’ My efforts didn’t satisfy her, though. She hesitated over a fresh hankie she pulled from her purse, shot a look at the slumped, indifferent back of the cabman, gave a corner of the hankie a quick lick and scrubbed the blood from my chin. ‘Now you’re decent.’
Sackville Street passed in a dizzy blur: the tram-lines, the Post Office, the flower- and fruit-sellers at the base of the Pillar, the hotels and shops, the curved sweep of the Rotunda, our Square.
Lockie opened the door. ‘Let’s get you up to bed.’ She came up with me to the room I shared with Florrie, turned the bed down, brought me a mug of salt water to rinse my mouth, a bowl to spit into and a flannel to wipe with. ‘But later,’ she said. ‘Give it time to harden first, or you’ll set it to bleed all over again.’
By then Mother and Florrie had gathered into the room. ‘Did he give you the gas?’ Florrie asked. ‘They say he takes it himself, more often than he gives it to his patients. I wouldn’t go near him, myself.’
‘Why didn’t you say so sooner?’ I lisped, clear as I could through the gauze packed into my enormous cheek. Thay tho thooner.
Florrie’s laugh was rare and sudden, hard to resist. She let a kind of bark out of her and her whole body shook, setting me off too.
‘Florrie!’ Mother’s mouth did a little jig of its own, then settled down. ‘You could ruin a man’s good name.’
That was a dreary evening. I didn’t go down for supper; I’d a rotten taste in my mouth and my head ached. Instead, I lay on my bed, a flannel at my cheek, and tried not to let my tongue worry the place where the tooth had been. I went over all that had happened, feeling well and truly sorry for myself. Professor Hayden, Liam, the dentist – the day had been a slowly closing door. The rest of the world moved on out into the stream of life, while I was left stranded and forgotten on the riverbank, at low tide.
The war was real, men out there fighting and dying, while I lay on a comfortable bed moaning about a toothache. I’d missed a single meal, and there were children in tenements all around me who’d count themselves lucky if they saw a proper meal in a week. I’d little to complain about. I should pull myself together, get more involved with Eva’s charitable groups – she was forever raising money for good causes, with bazaars and raffles and cake sales.
When Florrie came up, she sat in front of the dressing-table mirror and gave her hair its hundred strokes. I wondered when Liam would get in. I rehearsed an apology in my mind, while Florrie droned on about the afternoon she’d spent in the company of her fiancé, a paragon called Eugene Sheehan who sold religious artefacts for a living. As she told it, their conversation was entirely commercial, to do with advantageous positions for premises and the merits of a plate-glass window for a shopfront.
I’d say she bored me to sleep. The next morning I woke with an ache in my face and a thudding head, but my cheek wasn’t swollen any more. I found Liam downstairs at the breakfast table, in his own clothes. He looked pale but happy. I sat across from him and steeled myself to apologize, but he jumped in ahead of me. ‘Isabel and I are engaged.’
‘I’m sorry?’
He repeated himself, and there was Florrie making little squeals of excitement and giving him a hug, then Lockie came in with a plate of rashers, and Matt behind her. Beck, Liam’s spaniel, blundered around waving his tail saying hello to us all and getting in everyone’s way. By the time order was restored our parents had joined us.
‘What will you do for a ring?’ Florrie asked, sprinkling demerara sugar on to her bread and butter.
And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood … I must have been feeling the effects of the gas, still.
‘Dad gave me one.’
So Dad knew, and I didn’t.
Mother set the teapot back down on its trivet. ‘Which ring?’
I took up the pot. While I poured, Matt held the cups with a little wink, as though it were a game of Tea Party. He passed them around the table with exaggerated care when they were full. I was glad of something to do, glad Matt was there as a buffer.
Dad cracked an egg open with his knife, sliced the top off it. ‘One of my mother’s – the squarish silver one, with green stones.’
Mother took in a sharp breath. ‘Those are emerald chips.’
‘Isabel’s birthstone.’ Liam looked pleased with himself. He was passing rasher rinds and the casing of a pudding to the dog under the table.
‘Stop that,’ Mother said. ‘Or do it outside. I wish you’d discussed this with me beforehand, Bill.’
‘Ah, Mildred, there wasn’t time. You never wanted it. It’s too small for you, and you didn’t like it enough to get it sized. You said so yourself.’
‘Come on, Beck.’ Liam pushed back his chair and stood up. He dropped a kiss on the top of Mother’s head as he passed her on his way out, the dog lumbering after him. Mother closed her eyes. The look of pain on her face gave me a lump in my throat. I mumbled an apology and followed Liam out.
Dad caught a hold of my arm as I passed his chair. ‘You’re very quiet, Catkin.’
‘It’s the tooth.’
‘Is it? You wouldn’t be out of sorts with Liam, would you?’
‘I’m going after him now.’
‘Good.’ He gave my arm a little shake. ‘Don’t store up regrets for yourself. Tomorrow, he’ll be gone.’
I caught up with Liam in the back garden. Beck had his nose in a bush. Half blind from cataracts, he was being taunted by a bee. He jerked his nose back, then shoved it into the bush again, wagging his tail.
‘Has he finished the bacon?’
‘He has.’
I caught Beck’s tail in my hand, felt its urge against my palm and let it go. ‘I’m happy for you, Liam. Isabel is lovely.’
‘She is.’ He gave me a sidelong look, and went back to watching Beck. ‘You’ll find someone too.’
‘Who says I want to?’ I was livid with him all over again, for sounding like a governess in some stupid romance. How could we be saying such stale, empty things to each other? ‘What did her father say?’
The trace of a grin crossed his mouth. ‘She didn’t give him much chance to say anything, she’d it all worked out.’ He shielded his eyes from the sun to look at me. ‘She’s twenty-five, she has money her mother left her. And she’d her mind made up. When Isabel sets her mind on something, she’d run rings around anyone, even the Judge –’
‘That’s all well and fine, Liam, but why didn’t you tell me?’
Beck yelped and came over to bury his face in Liam’s leg. ‘You poor eejit,’ Liam murmured. ‘What did you expect?’
‘Is that directed at me?’
‘Should it be?’ He grinned up at me. His eyes were light and clear.
Suddenly all the prickly resentment I’d been harbouring evaporated. ‘I’ve been a brat,’ I said. ‘And I’m sorry. Can we stop this, now? I hate it.’
The relief in his face shamed me. He held out his hands and I took them. His clasp was warm and steady, unbearably dear and familiar. Then Lockie came out and said Liam was wanted, because Mother had it in mind to pay a visit to Isabel and her father. I let him go.
I helped Liam to pack when he came in again, and arranged his room so that I could move into it when he was gone. Matt had his eye on it, but
Liam said no, I was to have it. ‘Katie’ll take better care of it,’ he said.
‘You mean, she’s more likely to give it back,’ was Matt’s opinion.
Eva came in the afternoon and Bartley brought their daughter, Alanna, at suppertime. The conversation lurched along like a faulty train trying to leave a station. I stared at Liam, hard, whenever I thought I’d get away with it, tried to fix him in place in my mind. The men talked about guns. Liam said he’d leave his behind, except for the Webley. He pulled on Beck’s ears. ‘They’ll give me a Lee-Enfield.’ His eyes lit up. ‘I’ve heard that a good marksman can fire twelve decent shots a minute with it.’
Eva busied herself with wiping Alanna’s mouth. Liam sent his plate up for more of the ham Dad was carving. I said I didn’t want any more. ‘There’s only a small bit left,’ Mother said. ‘Bartley?’
Bartley put his hand flat to his waistcoat. ‘I couldn’t, but thank you. It was delicious.’ They were so polite to each other always, their excessive manners an indication of their mutual dislike.
Various people came to say their goodbyes after supper. Some of Liam’s friends stood in a knot in the corner, talking about the war in low voices; Mother’s sister Chrissie came in from Kingstown; Isabel was shy with us all and a little awkward, ’til Eva put her at ease by borrowing her ring to twist for a wish – after that we all had to try it. Some of the neighbours dropped in. They said they wouldn’t stay long, but they showed no desire to leave ’til Eva announced that it was long past Alanna’s bedtime, and her own. Liam said he would see Isabel home.
