by Pat Jourdan
“Don’t you want my umbrella?” she asked the porter at the desk. He was chatting on the phone to someone called Tomás, but nodded at her in a friendly way. “In case I stab at a picture, you know, like the suffragettes…” she tried to explain.
With a laugh at this idea, he said
“Well, if you insist, but you don’t look the type to do that. I’ll keep it just here –“ pointing to the shelves behind him and while not exactly dismissing her, he took up the phone again and continued talking to the invisible Tomás.
The paintings were ones that she was comfortable with, solid Impressionists, some familiar as postcards, including a Rue Mont-Cenis by Utrillo and some fashionable portraits of nineteenth century rich ladies and their children. Yards of silk and laces. Hours of ironing for someone. Yet what Norah noticed then and remembered later back home was the bright warmth of the brass door-latches and the kindly face of Sir Hugh Lane himself, (the donor of most of the pictures) here and there in a couple of portraits. Hint of humour and great sympathy. A pity there were no men about like that these days. Sunk with the Lusitania in 1915, that was it, and the First World War had finished off the rest.
Norah came out into the sunlight again. As it shone on the large bronze Children of Lir sculpture in the square a group of Japanese tourists were busy taking photos by the fountain. It was the beginning of another rush-hour and the golden light on the sculpted swans definitely traced the end of a spring afternoon. She would go home right now. The day was complete, she could go with the tide of the early evening. It was not a wise move but if there were no buses at the other end after the station, she could go mad and hire a taxi for the last part. Though perhaps that was not a good idea after all. There was the risk of gossip. O’Rielly’s was the only taxi firm back home, he would be bound to ask questions. The two days were her secret, saved up from all those years of going nowhere. A two mile walk in the dark would have to be risked, a better gambit, private.
***
The year perked up. The last week of May saw the full greening of the trees in the back garden of the shop. The newspapers were more interesting – The Irish Times, The Independent, The Examiner and all the rest, while the Dublin street names had real meaning now. After the shop was shut up in the evenings, Norah would sit by the empty fireside and read the papers from cover to cover, managing to watch television at the same time. She had seen it all – the Four Courts, the three Cathedrals, Leinster House, the General Post Office, Trinity College. There had also been the Book of Kells; at 9.15 on her second day she had been the first and only person waiting for the Trinity Library to open and had spent a few minutes alone with the Book of Kells itself before a package tour of Americans came in and it became a circus.
The attendant at the gatehouse had shown her the way, as there was no sign. She could not go marching into University precincts.
“It’s there, lady, that big building up there on the right, the library it is… And do you know,” he confided winningly, “I’ve never gone to see it myself.”
“Too busy telling other people where it is, I suppose,” Norah had answered and they had both laughed at the daftness of it. Random belonging like this was a treasure in itself. It was lasting now through print, radio and television. “I’ve been there,” she could say.
And here was a catastrophe – a convent in St Stephen’s Green had caught fire. Four nuns had been killed, the entire building collapsed, an inferno. The quiet Green amok with fire engines, it made the evening television headlines. The next day messages of sympathy had flooded in from all over the world including one from the Pope himself, the Queen too.
“I’ve been there. I’ve sat on that bench, just there, and fed sparrows with crumbs. The windows of the convent would have been…just a bit further in that direction, yes, I would have been able to see them… all ablaze and the sisters having to jump out of windows and scale along those balconies … how strange.”
It made her feel ashamed. That afternoon a week ago had been so beautiful, so calm, and this had been waiting to happen. She felt personally responsible as if she had betrayed all the convent.
A week later it was the turn of the Sir Hugh Lane Gallery. Masked gunmen had gone in and had held up the attendants. (Where was Tomás after all? What had happened to the friendly man at the counter? Had he been hurt?) There had been an armed daylight robbery of a valuable painting. Television cameras roamed round the white hallway. It looked just the same.
“I’ve been there as well. I might just have been coming out of the Ladies, those lovely polished brass fingerplates..”The soulful eyes of Sir Hugh Lane would have been just round the corner; he would have been able to see it happen. The gangsters had escaped. The news went on to other disasters.
From then onwards the daily news kept this invisible bond alive. Norah felt personally involved in the country’s happenings. With growing fascination she switched on the evening television each night, to scan any more events.
“Do you know,” she said to Mr Healy as they packed his usual week’s shopping into two battered shopping bags, “I think I might well be going off to Dublin for a couple of days. Just a little trip.” Within a second, years of careful self-control broke, years of prudence. They had been discussing the events in Dublin, the convent going on fire, the gunmen in the art gallery.
“I was there, just a day or two before.”
“Both times?” Mr Healy looked at her sharply.
“Well, both places,” she conceded.
“You better be careful, then,” he said, stuffing two packets of digestive biscuits into his overflowing bag. “It’s as if you have a gift for it, then – getting there first, just before catastrophes.” He gave her a puzzled look as he left the shop. The little bell over the door left a jangling echo after him. Norah watched the familiar figure amble down the main street. I could go, she thought. Terrible things will happen whether I’m there or not. I might as well be there when it starts. I might be in time. After all, I come from a different place out here.
***
The village street lay under the spring evening sky, the air sweet from all the fresh growth in the trees and fields behind all the houses. It was time to shut the shop, pull down the faded navy-blue blinds and switch on the television in the back room. An excitement filled the air. Newly-returned swifts circled rapidly over the village with their sharp cries, darting on all sides of the sky.
Norah went into the back room and sat down to watch the evening news with rapt attention, like a child in a new classroom.
***
