A Letter From America

by Geraldine O'Neill

  “Damn it!” she said, throwing her hands in the air in exasperation. “That’s another one gone. There’s a few already missing out of this box.”

  “I’ll get the brush and shovel,” Patrick told her, heading towards the back of the bar.

  By the time he came back Fiona thought that the glass decoration falling had in fact been a good thing, as it had stopped her making the comment about him not being married. Although he was easy-going, behind it all Patrick was a shy sort of fellow and she thought that quizzing him about his personal life would only embarrass him. He wasn’t the sort to pry into other people’s business. She had been grateful when he made no comment about her breaking off her romance with Paul Moore recently. He had just nodded and said that she knew her own mind, even though Paul had been a regular customer in the bar and Patrick had often stood chatting with him. Other people – her friends and customers – had been more curious, and it had been uncomfortable explaining that the opportunity to go to New York was more alluring than any romance at this time in her life.

  She was just packing away the two sets of lights when her mother came in wearing her heavy blue woollen coat and matching hat, and carrying her black leather handbag and gloves.

  Nance Tracey put her bag down on a high stool and then looked around the bar, nodding in approval when she saw the packed boxes containing the Christmas stuff.

  “Thank God it’s all down for another year and we can get back to normal. Though there’s still the parlour to be done.” She turned to Patrick. “They can go back upstairs when you get a minute. Seán already took the tree from the shop window and the other bits and pieces up this morning so it’s all clear in there too.”

  “Do you want them back in the same cupboard they came out of, at the top of the stairs?” he asked.

  “Yes, that’s the best place for them.” Nance turned back to her daughter. “I’m heading home now, Fiona, to get a quick bite of lunch with your father before we leave. I’ll ask Mary Ellen to keep a plate warm for you. She cooked a good-sized ham with roast potatoes and there’s plenty if you would like some too, Patrick.”

  “Thanks, Mrs Tracey, but I’m grand,” he said. “The mother will have something ready for me up the road.” He went over to the bar and started checking which of the Christmas boxes he would first take upstairs.

  Nance pulled on her black suede gloves, then lifted her handbag from the high stool. “Right, I’ll be off.”

  “What time will you be back this evening, Mam?” Fiona checked.

  “I’m not sure.” She looked towards the door, slightly distracted. “I think we’re calling out to your Aunt Catherine after the hospital, but we won’t stay too long.”

  Fiona raised her eyebrows at this news, but said nothing since Patrick was still there. She was surprised to hear that her mother was going to see her Aunt Catherine, as they hadn’t seen much of each other recently, even over Christmas. “Are you seeing Angela, too?”

  “Yes.” She gave a small sigh. “She would be upset if we were up in Dublin and didn’t go out to her.”

  A look of weariness crossed her mother’s face, and Fiona thought she seemed almost overwhelmed by the thought of having to see both her sister and daughter. She had seen that look on her mother’s face a lot recently when her Aunt Catherine’s name was mentioned. She guessed there was some kind of disagreement between the two sisters but, so far, her mother had said nothing about it. But that wasn’t unusual – her mother was a very close person.

  She wondered if her mother was embarrassed because Aunt Catherine’s English husband had deserted her and their adopted son, Joseph, a few years before. Fiona and her sisters didn’t know any details about when and how it had happened. It seemed that Uncle Kenneth had just one day disappeared back to England and not come back. It had been kept very quiet, and her mother didn’t like the subject being raised.

  She wasn’t surprised at her mother’s reticence about visiting Angela. They seemed to be on opposing sides about even the most trivial issues, and at times it caused an atmosphere when Angela was home. Fiona wondered why they clashed so much, because underneath it all they were actually very similar. They were both fussy about their appearance, their hair and clothes, and having everything just right.

  At times, Fiona found it hard to fathom Angela herself. She knew of course it hadn’t been easy for her sister spending half her life in hospitals in Dublin, and missing out on large chunks of their family life – but, as her mother said, nobody was to blame for that. Nobody could help what had happened to her. It was just the way life had turned out.

  Nance Tracey checked her watch now. “I rang Angela to say we were coming up and that we’d call to Leeson Street to see her on our way out to your Aunt Catherine’s. We’ll only stay for a quick cup of tea. She probably won’t be too bothered as she only saw us last week, but it’s best to keep the peace.”

  “Well, tell her I’ll write to her as soon as I’m settled in New York,” Fiona said. “And tell Aunt Catherine and Joseph that I’m asking for them too, and that I’ll write to them as well.”

  “I will,” her mother said. She paused. “Oh, Fiona, I just thought...”

  “What?”

  “If you get time later, would you make a start on the Christmas tree in the parlour, please? Just the baubles and things – your father will carry the tree out to the back of the house when we get home.”

  Fiona’s heart sank at the thought of dismantling another Christmas tree.

  “I doubt if I’ll have the energy to do it by the time we get back home from Dublin,” her mother said. “Dublin always takes it out of me – and I don’t like to ask Mary Ellen. She’s not able to stand on chairs to be reaching for things. I’d be terrified she’d have a fall. You’re young and fit.” She looked straight at Fiona now and smiled. “You’ve made such a great job clearing here, you’ll do it in no time.”

  Fiona decided it wasn’t worth arguing over. “Fine,” she said in a resigned voice. “I’ll have it all done when you get back.”

  She shook her head in despair when the bell sounded as her mother closed the door behind her. Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw Patrick smiling. She turned towards him. “Don’t dare say a thing.”

  “You’ll miss all this when you go away,” he said. “You’ll wish you were back here sweeping up all the broken Christmas decorations and gathering up the empty beer bottles. What girl wouldn’t miss it?” He turned away, quietly humming ‘Jingle Bells’.

  She started to laugh in spite of herself.

  Chapter 3

  Angela put her key in the white-painted door of the Georgian house in Leeson Street and then slowly walked along the dimly lit hallway to the first door. In daylight, it was bright with the sun streaming through the fanlight above the door, but on a cold, early January evening with only one small ceiling lamp, it was dark and gloomy. She unlocked her room door and went inside. The room was chilly, with no one home all day to keep a fire going.

  She went over to put her handbag and shopping bag down on one of the armchairs by the fireplace. Then she took off her coat and hat, her scarf and gloves. Her leg was painful and she needed to rest it now and take a couple of aspirins for the pain, but she had a few things to do first, before her mother and father arrived.

  Resting her arm on the back of the chair for support, she looked around her large bedroom – or bedsit, as some of the other girls referred to it – checking that everything was as it should be. Her brown eyes moved over the mahogany wardrobe and dressing-table, the iron-framed bed draped with the white lace cover her aunt had given her, to the window with the heavy green satin curtains tied back with silk tassels. The fire was already set from that morning – a layer of rolled-up newspaper, firelighters placed carefully over that, then small pieces of wood topped by lumps of coal.

  Her gaze moved across the room to the barley-twist, gate-leg, oak table where she ate her meals. Although it was small when folded up and standing against the
wall, when extended it seated four. She kept two of the matching chairs at either side of the table, one near her wardrobe and the other for sitting at her dressing–table. On top of the table she had an old silver fruit bowl which was now filled with half a dozen hyacinth bulbs that were beginning to bloom. Looking at them made her smile as she thought of Georgie, the hospital gardener, who had dropped them into her office the day before. He had planted them in an old seed box and, as soon as Angela had got back home, she’d found the silver bowl and transferred them into it.

  Everything else in the room looked presentable, and she was satisfied that it would pass her mother’s scrutiny. As far as she was concerned, the room was as good as any of the bedrooms back home in Tullamore – and in some ways even better. Since she’d moved into the room in Leeson Street, she had constantly improved it, adding things like cushions and lace covers for the arms of the faded chairs and delicate lacework on the dressing-table. Before her parents arrived, she would freshen up her make-up and make sure her hair was perfect.

  She went across the room to light the fire. She picked up the matches from behind the clock on the mantelpiece. As she bent down to touch the flame to a corner of the newspaper, she winced in pain. Her leg was sore today and she now regretted not having used her calliper when she was shopping. The usual vanity – not wanting to look conspicuous. It was the same when she was back home in Tullamore. She hated wearing it as it only drew attention to the difference between her and her two perfect sisters.

  Her parents were due in just over an hour’s time. It would be a quick visit as she had seen them at home only the previous week, but they never came up to Dublin without seeing her. Not after the argument last year when she discovered her mother had come up for a day’s shopping with her friend, Nora, and had not bothered to tell her. She had happened to be in Clery’s department store in her lunch hour with a friend, when she bumped into the two women. Her mother had made light of it, but later that night Angela had gone out to the phone box at the end of the road and told her mother exactly how she felt about it.

  “You could have the decency to let me know when you’re coming up to Dublin instead of me bumping into you in the middle of Clery’s. I’m sure there aren’t many mothers from Tullamore who would come all the way up to Dublin without seeing their daughter, especially if they haven’t seen her for over a month.”

  “But I didn’t know I was coming until last night and I had no way of letting you know,” her mother had said in a high, defensive voice.

  “What was to stop you ringing the office and telling me this morning?”

  “It was too early before I left to meet Nora and then we caught the train up to Dublin.”

  “Well, you could have rung me from the phone box in the station when you arrived in Dublin,” Angela had argued. “I’m quite sure if it had been Fiona or Bridget you would have made the effort to see them. I’m obviously not worth the effort.”

  “Now that’s absolute nonsense,” her mother had said. “We go from term to term without seeing Bridget, and you know that. We see more of you than we do of her.”

  “Daddy always makes the effort to see me when he’s up in Dublin at the brewery meetings. He’d never come up to Dublin without seeing me.”

  “Oh, Angela, you take things too personally!”

  Her mother always said that.

  “Okay,” Angela had said in a strained tone. “Okay. I’ve said what I wanted to say. Let’s leave it at that.”

  Her mother had obviously listened, and since then been more careful about hurting her feelings, to the point of wariness.

  The fire lit now, she hung her coat and scarf up in the wardrobe, and put her hat on a shelf. She glanced in the wardrobe mirror and decided that the blue twinset, pearl necklace and navy skirt that she had worn to work were fine for this evening. She lifted her shopping bag over to the table and took out a bottle of fresh milk, a fruit loaf and a selection of four cakes which she knew her parents would like.

  She then went back out along the corridor to the communal kitchen to make herself a cup of tea, to have with the aspirins. If she took them now, she reckoned, her leg wouldn’t be so bad by the time they arrived. She could hear the sound of girls’ voices and occasional laughter from upstairs, but when she reached the kitchen there was no one else around. She was relieved, as she preferred her own company for a while after being with people all day in work. The large kettle had recently been boiled, so she turned the electric ring on again and placed it back on top.

  She lifted the smallest teapot and found it still had the old tea leaves inside it. No matter how many times this sort of thing was brought up at the meetings about housekeeping rules, there was always one of the girls who would leave their mess behind. She went to the bin to empty the tea leaves and then back to the sink to rinse the teapot.

  How long, she thought, until she could have a normal house to live in? A place that was not a hospital or a hostel or a shared house. A place that was nothing to do with her own family, where she could come and go without everyone knowing her business.

  A place that had nothing to do with polio.

  She had contracted the disease when she was ten, and the episode had left her with a shorter, weaker and thinner left leg and a noticeable limp. Over the years she’d had a series of operations, and for months after each one she had to wear an iron calliper to strengthen and support the leg, along with specially made, awful-looking shoes. Between the operations, physiotherapy and the calliper, her leg had improved, but she had accepted that it would never be right. She knew she would always have trouble with it. She had managed without the calliper recently, but if her leg was still bad in the morning, she would have to wear the calliper to work. It was the only thing that really helped and yet she hated it.

  She had too many memories of wearing it when she was a young girl, conscious of the noise the metal made as she walked along. Noticing that people turned to see where the noise was coming from, then quickly looked away when she came limping towards them. She often heard them whispering about her, saying how sad it was to see such a lovely-looking girl crippled.

  It was only when she was with the other children from the hospital that she could forget about her damaged leg. After years of being in and out of hospital together, they no longer noticed how their withered arms or legs looked, seeing only the individual personalities. They shared the sadness of being separated from their families – isolated in the early stages of the illness, behind protective glass doors and windows. Not allowed a touch or a kiss from their families, for fear of spreading the deadly germ.

  Her visitors were few, mainly her father, Aunt Catherine and Joseph – and occasionally her sisters or other relatives made a rare trip up to Dublin. There were often times when Angela felt disappointment in aunts and uncles who were too busy to think of their niece locked away in a ward in a hospital in Dublin, and in family friends who promised to come and never arrived. Usually, her disappointment was forgotten within hours of visiting time being over. But there was one visitor in particular that she always looked for...and whose absence she found harder and harder to forgive.

  Her own mother.

  As she grew older and understood more about her condition, she realised how lucky she was to have escaped so lightly, especially when she heard of other children and little babies who had actually died from polio when their breathing muscles were affected. She knew that whilst her leg would always be problematic, the operations and the physiotherapy had made a substantial difference to it. The leg had grown stronger and her walking had improved.

  Angela had attended school with her sisters before her illness, and had advanced well beyond most of the others in her class in reading and writing and Irish. In hospital, she attended classes when she was well enough, and whilst the education wasn’t the same or as consistent as being in a normal school, she managed to pick things up. During those years, she developed a love for reading, and so passed away the long hours confin
ed in bed or sitting in corridors waiting to be seen by doctors or physiotherapists.

  It was in hospital that some of the other children received their only education, made their First Communions. Some learned to sing and to play musical instruments – and those with good enough legs even learned Irish dancing. But the biggest lesson they learned was how to be independent and manage without the support of a family.

  In between operations she went home. Going home was always the goal for most of the children. Every Christmas, Easter and summer, she looked forward to her father driving up to the hospital with her two sisters to collect her and take her back to her home in Tullamore. She would chat and laugh with the girls in the car, and they would tell her about things that had happened in school or about people she knew in the town.

  But after a few years she noticed that she didn’t know or remember some of the friends the girls were talking about – especially Fiona, who being older was in secondary school – and she didn’t know the names of certain teachers in school that Bridget referred to.

  Her father would always tell her funny stories about things that had happened in the shop or in the pub. But Angela noticed that he often repeated the same old stories that he thought would make her laugh. Especially the one about the customer who carried home half a stone of potatoes not noticing she had a hole in the bag, and only realising something was amiss when she got back to the house with an empty bag. Another story he repeated was about an elderly neighbour who had recently bought a car, and who, after starting up the engine, would jump out of the car and go to the middle of the road to check if there were any vehicles coming, then get back in again and drive off a minute or two later without looking again.

  Angela didn’t mind hearing the old stories again, because they reminded her of family life back at home, and she knew her father was being kind to her and trying to include her. She always felt relaxed on the journey home, as she and her sisters pointed things out from the car window, and passed bags of boiled sweets back and forth between them.