by Maeve Binchy
‘Is that her?’ he cried in disbelief. Stung to hear her new friend attacked before she had even laid eyes on her, Aisling moved to the window. But she couldn’t see her. Elizabeth and her case had moved into the house. There was a scream up the stairs from Peggy.
‘Mam, she’s here, Donal’s after opening the door for her. He came out of his bed and we never saw. …’
Eileen ran down the stairs from the breakfast room on the first floor. In the big, shabby door, silhouetted against the light, was the frail shape of Violet’s daughter. Donal had helped her drag her suitcase into the hall. He looked at her with delight. A new thing come into the house. A new person coming to live.
‘They’re getting the kitten because you came,’ he said to Elizabeth.
Eileen opened her arms out wide.
‘Come here to me and tell me all about the terrible journey,’ she said.
Close up, Elizabeth’s eyes were even more enormous than ever. ‘I wet my knickers,’ she said, ‘I’m very sorry.’
Eileen tightened her grip on the bony little frame.
‘It doesn’t matter, love, we’ll have that sorted out in no time.’
Elizabeth started to cry.
‘No, it’s terrible. The back of my coat is wet and it’s gone on my shoes. I’m so ashamed, Mrs O’Connor. I didn’t … I didn’t know … I couldn’t. …’ Her shoulders heaved.
‘Listen to me, child, this is a house where people are always wetting their knickers, come on upstairs with me, there there. …’ and Eileen stroked the fine hair and brushed away the tears, taking Elizabeth’s hand away from her eyes. ‘Sure, aren’t you here now, home safe and sound. Come on with me. …’
Sean came in. ‘Hello, Ma. Ma, I met a man in Dublin, this fellow Terry. …’
Eileen turned on him. ‘Carry that suitcase upstairs at once you big useless lump. Get a move on now. Shut your mouth about who you met. You couldn’t carry the child’s luggage for her, you couldn’t get a sick child down here safely and with some kindness. You hadn’t a brain in your head to ask her did she need a lavatory.’
‘I did!’ Sean was enraged by the injustice of it. ‘I did and do you know, she went into the men’s.’
‘You’re a big, ignorant lump,’ Eileen said, and didn’t even notice the tears of rage and misunderstanding well up in his eyes. Tight-lipped, he picked up the case and carried it upstairs. He opened the door of Aisling’s room and flung the case in hard. He had suspected that this girl was going to cause trouble. He was right.
It only took Eileen ten minutes to get Elizabeth ready for her first meal in her new home. There was a rapid unpack to unearth clean clothes. The contents of the case were flung on the bed with an abandon that would never have been known back in London. Mother didn’t do things like that. Mother would have gone away and let Elizabeth cope by herself but Mrs O’Connor didn’t seem to understand.
‘Step out of these wet things, come on now, sure we’ll throw them in the wash with everything else. Come on, now, there’s a good girl, and into the bathroom there with you. Give yourself a bit of a quick wash and you’ll feel fresh all over. I’ll hang up these. Come on, now, that’s it.’
Mrs O’Connor actually expected Elizabeth to go across the corridor in just her vest and carrying a towel. She couldn’t mean it. Never in her whole life had Elizabeth left her bedroom without being fully dressed or wearing a dressing-gown. She made an ineffectual stab at her suitcase.
‘Could I please take. …’
‘Yes, pet?’
‘My … er … dressing-gown. …’ Elizabeth was scarlet. ‘Surely. Aren’t you a funny little thing.’
And then there was no escape. She had to meet the family. If they were all as horrible as the one on the bus it would be very frightening. But Mrs O’Connor was … well … very friendly, Elizabeth supposed. Not like Mother, not like anyone’s mother but very … busy and easy-going. The bathroom was enormous, not like the one at home. It had plaster falling off, and the geyser over the bath was all rusty. There were a lot of face flannels all screwed up, not on neat hooks. There were two mugs full of toothbrushes – how did they know which belonged to which person, Elizabeth wondered. There was a knock at the door. Elizabeth held on to the basin for a moment. Right. She did feel clean and comfortable again, and hungry – a bit travel-sick but definitely hungry. Bravely she unlocked the door and came out. Eileen took Violet’s child by the hand and led her down the stairs to the breakfast room.
Donal was sitting by the fire, wrapped in a blanket that Peggy had found for him. He jumped up at once and the blanket nearly went into the grate. Eamonn was playing with two china dogs, making them bark at each other. Young Sean was standing moodily at the window. Maureen had come in, as instructed, in time for lunch; she had a mirror and was examining her nose without much enthusiasm. Peggy was hovering, not knowing whether to bring in the pot of soup or wait until the mistress called for it. The master of the house was sitting in his shirt-sleeves reading the Irish Independent. Aisling was at a drawing book, writing furiously; she barely looked up when the door opened.
‘This-is-Elizabeth-and-will-you-mind-that-blanket,’ Eileen said in one breath. Eamonn rushed and rescued it before it caught the flame. Sean put his paper down.
‘You’re very welcome in this house, child,’ he said. Elizabeth shook hands with him gravely. Maureen nodded and Eamonn giggled. There was a gurgle from Niamh in her pram. Young Sean’s eyes never left the square, where the bus, now loaded with passengers and provisions, had just left again.
‘Aisling, come here and say hello to Elizabeth – what are you doing?’ asked Eileen crossly.
‘I was making a notice,’ said Aisling, with one of her huge enveloping smiles. ‘For our door. It’s very important.’ In big, uneven letters, she had written:
AISLING AND ELIZABETH. PLEASE KNOCK. NO ADMITTANCE.
She showed it to Elizabeth proudly.
‘Who’d want to go into your silly old room, anyway,’ said Eamonn.
‘I don’t think anyone is seeking admittance,’ said Maureen.
‘Better to have it there all the same,’ said Aisling, seeking approval from Elizabeth. It was an important moment.
‘Much better, I think,’ said Elizabeth as she took the notice. ‘Aisling and Elizabeth. Please Knock. No Admittance. Super.’
III
EILEEN WAS BEGINNING her letter to Violet. Somehow the presence of Elizabeth in the house made Violet seem further away rather than nearer. For three days she had been with them with her pinched little face flushing when anyone addressed her directly, trying to answer and be polite and often finding the wrong words. If Eileen hadn’t known better she might have thought the child had been reared in an institution.
‘How will I explain all about Sister Bonaventure?’ she asked.
‘What?’ Sean shuffled the paper. He was sitting by the fire with his socks almost in the grate.
‘You know how bad Violet is at writing, she mightn’t reply for a month and we’d be in all kinds of trouble.’
‘Huh,’ said Sean, hardly attending to her. Violet and her ways interested him hardly at all.
‘Of course, years back in St Mark’s, Violet never went to religious knowledge classes. We used to see her out of the window walking round the hockey pitch.’
‘Well, then?’ grunted Sean.
Young Sean was sitting by the window. He always sat by the window nowadays, as if he hoped to see some other kind of life through it, or so Eileen imagined.
‘What do you think, son?’ she called to him. He hadn’t been listening, but he thought that Elizabeth should go to the catechism classes, or whatever else was on offer. No point in making her more different than she was already. Eileen was about to agree, when her husband rattled the paper at the fireside and said that the English people were atheists, and that the one thing they feared most in the world was the domination of the Roman Catholic Church. Better not give them any more grounds for complaint.
‘I suppose I’ll have to make up my own mind as usual,’ sighed Eileen and took up her pen.
Dear Sister Bonaventure,
I have been in touch with Elizabeth’s parents, both devout Anglicans, and they would prefer it if she spent the time reading her Bible while the rest of the children are having their religious instruction lessons. They are very grateful to the convent for making this arrangement.
She read it out to them, and both men laughed.
‘I hope God will forgive me,’ she said seriously.
‘I hope someone will be able to find the child a Bible – you know, the one she’s supposed to be reading,’ said Young Sean, and for a moment, there was real family laughter between them.
The kitten had been named Monica after endless arguments between Aisling, Eamonn and Donal. Elizabeth had not joined in. As the battle had reached a crescendo, Aisling had turned to Elizabeth and demanded to know who her best friend at school in England had been.
‘I didn’t have a best friend,’ stammered poor Elizabeth.
‘Well, who did you like best?’ shouted Aisling.
‘At school … um … Miss James,’ was the honest reply.
‘You can’t call a cat Miss James!’ Aisling tried once more. ‘Who did you sit beside?’
‘Monica. …’ Elizabeth began.
‘Monica!’ exclaimed Aisling. ‘That’s it!’
They all said the name. None of them knew anyone called Monica. Elizabeth was a little disappointed. She had never liked Monica Hart – a bossy girl who used to laugh at Elizabeth and pinch her sometimes just to make her jump. She wished the beautiful furry kitten were not called that. Something like Blackie or Sooty – names that kittens were called in books – but the O’Connors seemed to think entirely in terms of people’s names; they had been debating Oliver and Seamus before Monica had been settled on.
And now it was Monica’s eternal future that was worrying. Aisling had been very anxious to baptise the new kitten, but Eileen had arrived in time to halt the ceremony.
‘But, God couldn’t send Monica to limbo, could he?’ Aisling had persisted.
‘No, of course not,’ said Eileen, who often got weary of filling in the gaps that appeared after the daily religious instruction classes.
‘What’s limbo?’ Elizabeth asked fearfully. It sounded bad.
‘Oh, it’s full of babies – you know, dead babies that didn’t get baptised.’
‘There are no cats in limbo,’ said Eileen firmly. She had noticed the large eyes in the small anxious face becoming even rounder and darker at the mention of a place full of dead babies. It seemed so natural in the convent, with Sister Mary and Sister Bonaventure, to talk of unbaptised babies going to limbo because they didn’t have the sanctifying grace that would let them look at God. It seemed unnatural and macabre trying to explain this to Elizabeth, who knew nothing of the rules.
‘You never see pictures of them in heaven, mind,’ said Eamonn, trying to disrupt the calm.
‘They’re all round the other side,’ cut in Eileen. Then, as she saw the question forming on all their faces, ‘You know, the bit they don’t show in the pictures of heaven where all the animals and birds and all the creatures St Francis loved are all gathered.’ As she spoke, she wondered did all other parents have to interpret religion so wildly for their children, and whether the Lord approved of her efforts.
*
Violet opened the letter eagerly. The house had been far emptier without Elizabeth than she would have believed possible. Already she had forgotten her constant irritation with the little face that reddened and whitened like the colours mixing in a painting box. She hoped that Elizabeth was not being too timid amid the undoubtedly boisterous family in Kilgarret. She had forgotten to warn her about keeping her money safely hidden or giving it to Eileen for safe-keeping in case the rough boys and girls took it from her. Two letters fell out. Violet picked up Elizabeth’s first. Lines had been ruled on a page for her. More lines than were used.
Dear Mother and Father,
I am very well I hope you are very well. We have got a new kitten called Monica, it is only for Aisling and me. Its not for Eamonn but we are going to let Donal play with it. Aisling is not like Aisling it’s like Ashleen. It’s an Irish name. I start school next week. Aunt Eileen has borrowed a big Bible from some people who are Protestants and I will take it to the school to read when the others are reading about the Virgin and the Saints. Peggy tells us stories every night.
Love from
Elizabeth
A wave of anti-climax flowed over Violet. Who was Peggy? What was all this about a Bible, a kitten, the Virgin? Was all this rubbish about Aisling to do with how you pronounced her name? Violet read the little note again. It seemed happy and preoccupied, she thought, that much at least was good. But no question about home, no hint of missing anyone. Of course, this was only the second letter that Elizabeth had written in her life. There had been no reason for her to write letters home before.
Sighing slightly, Violet picked up the other paper. Normally Eileen’s correspondence was so long and flowery that she skimmed through, but this time she was eager to read every word. But Eileen had decided to be brief too.
My dear Violet,
Just a word to tell you how delighted we are to have Elizabeth with us. She is a lovely child, very gentle and eager to please. I hope she doesn’t find our brood too much for her. She was pale and weary after the long journey but has cheered up greatly and is eating well and bouncing around. I thought you would prefer her not to have Christian Doctrine lessons so I arranged a Bible for her from some of Sean’s customers who are C. of I. It’s the right one, it has Authorised Version on it, I looked.
We’ll encourage her to write to you every week and she can post these letters herself in the square and she can say what she likes so you needn’t think they come through us. The same when you write to her. Nobody but Elizabeth will see it.
I hope you are all managing over there all right. Our thoughts are with you in this awful time. As always, Eileen
What did Eileen mean about Elizabeth ‘bouncing around?’ Elizabeth didn’t bounce. And why all the fuss about Bibles and authorised versions? The Irish were indeed obsessed with religion.
Violet put the letters on the hall table so that George could see them, then she put her headscarf on and went out to join the lengthening queues in the shops. …
Young Sean was being even more of a trial than usual in the shop and his father’s patience was extremely limited. Eileen could remember a time when they had all looked forward to Sean’s serving his time in O’Connor’s shop. Sean more than anyone. He had begged to be allowed to leave school after his Intermediate Certificate when he was fifteen, but his parents would hear none of it. The eldest of the family, he had to put the stamp of education on them all by doing his Leaving Certificate.
Now the examination was done and the results expected any day, but the promised excitement and manliness of joining his father in the family business had not materialised. Young Sean was moody and would flare up on any subject. ‘Ah, leave him alone,’ Eileen would sometimes say to her husband across the supper table when another list of complaints about the day’s work began. ‘Can’t you see the boy’s worried sick about his exam results …?’
Sean Senior would grunt. ‘Can’t imagine that any piece of paper will make him any more use in the shop, only more arrogant if he gets it.’
Young Sean, stung by the sudden and unfair lack of interest in all school work, would retaliate. ‘Well, you had me working like a black man all the last years saying it was the most important thing on earth – why?’
‘Don’t speak to me in that tone of voice. …’ the master of the house would say.
And, ‘I won’t speak to you at all then,’ the son of the house would reply; and a scraping of the chair and a bang of the door and he would be gone. A second bang of the door and he would be out in the square and across to the library where he would sit
and read the newspapers for hours on end with everything they had to say about the world where there was war.
He would be seventeen on 7 September. Eileen remembered so well the year he was born, with the Civil War still all around them, and how she had written to Violet about her hopes that her son would grow up in a land that would never go to war again. She couldn’t remember what, if anything, Violet had replied. But now it was happening, in a distorted way, her son was grown-up and his land was not at war – and that was the problem. …
She had thought of having a party of some kind on his birthday. It would be the day the school reopened and so the horror would be taken out of it for little Elizabeth.
Eileen found herself more and more drawn to this odd little girl. There was something more gracious, less rude and heavy and rough about her than there was in any of Eileen’s own children. It was as if the polish which St Mark’s was meant to confer had skipped Violet and Eileen and landed on Violet’s child. She was so willing to please, and so unlike any of the O’Connors in this that Eileen felt somehow wistful. Why hadn’t she been able to give any of this gentleness to her own family? Only Donal had any trace of it and that was because he was delicate and not able to tear through the house, shove and push, shout and grab.
Yes, a bit of a party might cheer up her restless son. He might lose his strained look and even Sean Senior might mellow a bit in the light of birthday candles. She began to make a list, then felt a pang of guilt about the birthday parties in England where no child would have cakes or cream – but it passed. And perhaps he would bring over a few of his friends from school; that young Murray boy, or one of the Healys, or whoever it was he was friendly with these days. Funny that she didn’t know. There was a time when he used to have the house full of his friends.
When he came back from the library and crept into the kitchen to eat something from the meat safe, she would talk to him about the party. It would cheer him up. Cheer them all up.
7 September. Donal was waved off to school – he didn’t want to be accompanied any further, not by his mother and two girls; and he ran off on spindly legs, like a leaf, Eileen thought, comparing him to the stout twigs of boys who were already pummelling each other cheerfully in the yard of the boys’ preparatory. Then, with a smile, she deposited Aisling and Elizabeth, trying not to notice Elizabeth’s fearful glance at the huge statue pointing to its exposed and open heart …
