The Memory of Us: A Novel

by Camille Di Maio

  “And I don’t want to disappoint my father.”

  “Your father?”

  “Yes. It’s all he lives for, to see me become a priest.”

  My heart sank, though I’d known all along that this was the truth of the matter. “Yes, I’d heard something like that. A—a priest.” I could barely say the word, and I felt my face prickle with emotion. Dogs are flying, Lucille, I thought. Monkeys are talking.

  “Yes. Two years down and six to go.”

  “So many?” I asked. “That’s how long it takes to become a doctor.”

  “Well, I will be one, in a certain way. My father says it’s like being a doctor for the soul.” He paused, placing his elbows on the table. “What about you?”

  Archie dropped a pot at the sink, and the clamor echoed in my ears. But not as shrilly as Ethel’s voice: “Archibald Smythe, you had better pick that up and get to the potatoes before I—”

  “You’d never believe that they were married, would you?” Kyle had leaned in so close that I could feel his breath in my ear, and I became light-headed.

  “I beg your pardon?” I couldn’t decide if he was joking. But his face looked sincere enough.

  “For better or worse!”

  “In dishes and in grease.”

  “’Til dinner do they part.”

  “Quite so.”

  “A fine example of wedded bliss,” Kyle said. “Makes the seminary look all the more attractive.” He grinned, and I pulled away and looked out the window, afraid of what my expression might reveal. “What about you?” he said. “Are you going to university?”

  “Yes. In September. I’m going to London. To study nursing.”

  “Well, how about that? I’ll be tending to people’s souls, and you’ll be tending to their bodies. Together, we’re a full service shop.”

  Like a fool, I couldn’t help but like the way he said together. “Yes, I suppose we are.” I glanced at my hands, my nails painted a champagne color just for the occasion. “Well, I should go see Charles now. It’s been nice talking with you.”

  “You, too, Miss Westcott.”

  “You can call me Julianne.”

  “Julianne.”

  My name lingered there between us, like a musical note whose exquisite sound lingers at the end of a song.

  “Let me walk you to that wing. Somebody’s got to protect you from the creature with the wooden spoon.”

  I did my best impression of a damsel in distress. “I would be ever so grateful, Sir McCarthy. It seems that I am forever in your debt.” I touched my fingertips to my heart for effect, but stopped short at batting my lashes.

  “That’s Kyle to you, m’lady. And I don’t think the throne will be knighting Irishmen anytime soon, no matter how long I’ve lived here.”

  His laugh put me at ease, and I followed him out the door. I would have followed him to the moon.

  As he escorted me down the hall, I thought I saw Miss Ellis wink at me.

  Abertillery

  I quickly forgot the name spoken naïvely by the Campbell boy. It was of no consequence anyway, for its significance belonged to another woman, another life. We approached the farm, easily recognizable by its drooping fences and yards of clotheslines, sagging in the dead of night from abandoned shirts and blouses, skirts and trousers of various sizes, all colors muted by the well-worn thriftiness of hand-me-downs.

  I had been here twice before, and had been duly impressed by the efficiency of the large family, if not by their condition. The wash was done by two of the girls and folded by another, while the smallest played hide-and-seek underneath the freshly laundered piles. Most of the boys worked in the field, although one was handy with tools, and brought in a small income repairing furniture.

  But tonight was different. Even in the dark, I could see that the chores lay forgotten, foreboding like a canopy hung over the land.

  The boy got out of the truck and was at my side before I knew it. He opened my door and offered me his hand. It was a touching gesture, one that took me by surprise. It had been some time since I was treated like a lady, and I couldn’t help but be moved.

  “She’s this way.”

  He led me through the front door. I expected to find the downstairs empty, as it was well past anyone’s bedtime, but the children were scattered across its corners. Most of the younger ones had fallen asleep. Those who were awake were fidgeting. Only the oldest three were alert, aware of the drama unfolding in the next room.

  The tallest girl stood up and held out her hand. I did not recognize her, and I thought that she must have been otherwise occupied when I had called here previously. “Thank you for coming,” she said, as if I had popped in for a spot of tea. “I’m Emily. Please let me know how I can help.”

  “What is her condition?”

  “She’s bleeding. She always does, but not like this.”

  “Let me see her.”

  She tapped lightly on the door of the adjacent room, then pushed it open. The room was lit by a single low lamp at the head of the enormous iron bed in its center. The bed was covered by several quilts that were now tainted with a sea of bright crimson. Mr. Campbell knelt at the side of his wife, one hand holding hers and the other clutching a rosary.

  He looked up when I entered and nodded in acknowledgment, but his lips continued to move without sound as he prayed repetitively.

  “Mrs. Campbell,” I said. Her eyes flickered, and I could see that her usually pale skin was now spectral in its whiteness. I stepped close and stroked her face, which was burning with fever. “Emily,” I said without looking away, “get cold towels for her head, and prepare warm ones over the fire for the baby.”

  The mother let out a weak cry as a contraction waved inside her. Her back arched in pain. I pulled away the blankets and her nightgown to see that the baby had already crowned. It had a full head of hair, matted by blood. Another contraction began. I put one hand on her belly and pressed down, willing the baby to come out quickly.

  “Push,” I said, although the mother had no energy left. The task was left to me, and I worked my hands with every contraction until the miniature face revealed itself. My finger swept its mouth, removing the sludge of birth. It let out a hearty howl, and I saw a glimmer of relief on Mrs. Campbell’s face.

  “Almost there. The head is the hardest part.” Not that I needed to tell her that. Three more pushes, and the shoulders slipped out with ease. Well practiced, Emily brought me a pair of shears to cut the cord.

  “You have a girl.”

  Mr. Campbell paused in his prayers and looked up. I expected him to be troubled, both at the condition of his wife and at the thought of another mouth to feed. Instead, he looked at his daughter with a radiance that I couldn’t comprehend.

  I wrapped the baby in a clean towel. Born several weeks early, she seemed to weigh nothing, but she surprised me with her apparent health. It was my routine to bathe the baby before presenting it to its parents. But the mother clung to minutes that faded with each breath, so I handed her over straightaway.

  She pulled down her nightgown to reveal an engorged breast, the blue of the veins especially prominent against her chalky skin. She suckled the baby into a calm stupor. What a sweet scene it could have been in other circumstances.

  “Thank you,” she mouthed, the strain of the words possessing the rest of her strength.

  “I did nothing. I—I can’t do anything.” I paced the room, searching for something that could spare the family this tragedy. I could feel the foundations of my cultivated indifference begin to betray me.

  The oldest boy cracked the door open, and Mrs. Campbell covered herself with a blanket. He put his head in. “The priest is here.”

  The husband left the room to greet him, leaving the door ajar.

  “Mr. Campbell?”

  I picked up a towel, freshly heated.

  “I’m Father McCarthy.”

  Chapter Three

  My hopes for an opportunity to talk with Kyle again wer
e not realized. Miss Ellis told me that his father’s health was declining, so he did the work of two men rather than see the old man dismissed. I watched him from Charles’s window as he manicured the rosebushes, then cut the lawn in diagonal lines that revealed the dark and light shades of the grass in crisp, alternating bands.

  Miss Ellis slipped in and proudly disclosed the further results of her voluntary reconnaissance as we watched him wipe the sweat from his brow with his shirtsleeve and return to work.

  “He lives in Liverpool, dear. In fact, he works there during the week.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Same thing. His father has jobs there most days, and only comes out here on the weekends.”

  “I’ve never seen him in town.”

  “Well, it’s not likely that you would, is it? Being that he’s doing double duty right now. He probably hasn’t seen the inside of a pub or a cinema in weeks.”

  My heart raced at the thought that he was nearer to me every day than I had known. “Anything else?”

  “Only that he came from Ireland with his father when he was just two years old. If he has a mother, I don’t know anything about it.”

  She left when her break was over.

  That was to be my last time in Bootle for a while. The increased IRA activity on the coasts required more attention from Father, and in turn, he expected more of my help at the warehouse. It was no secret that he wanted me to follow him into business, overseeing the shipping empire that had elevated our family for three generations. It didn’t seem to matter that I was a girl. He grudgingly acknowledged my intention to become a nurse, hoping, perhaps, that enough exposure would acclimate me to the idea of working alongside him. “It’s all yours, Julianne,” he’d say, “since I have no son to leave it to.” I loved my father, but it pained me to hear him deny the existence of Charles so effortlessly.

  Mother made demands upon my time as well. The annual Ladies’ Society festival was close at hand. She was chairing it this year and had tasked me with management of the booths. So far I had deftly avoided any outings with the “nice young men” with whom she was more than willing to arrange social engagements. Her ambition was for me to be the wife of a prominent businessman or politician, replicating her own position in the coterie of the upper class.

  I doubted very much that she wanted me to follow her into the private despair that kept her closeted in her rooms with scotch when evenings turned into midnights. But as with the existence of a brother, I wasn’t supposed to know about that. I thought of our family, sometimes, as a tapestry: a perfect blending and weaving of colored threads that produced an enviable picture on our surface, while underneath we were a tangled maze of knots and stitches, colliding and separating in our own directions, united only in the mandate to keep the outward appearances lovely.

  Whenever I could steal away, I went out with Lucille. We loved catching matinees at the cinema, our favorite being the grand Trocadero, with its curved screen and glossy white Wurlitzer. The Movietone reels’ boring bits, like a review of Neville Chamberlain’s first month as prime minister, were occasionally offset by good ones like the disappearance of Amelia Earhart. Father would ask me when I returned if they had shown any updates on the Gestapo or other concerns out of Germany, but Lucille and I usually used that time to take turns visiting the lavatory or purchasing a sweet. There was no way that we would miss a minute of Cary Grant, that celluloid enchanter whose magazine photos adorned each of our closet doors.

  One afternoon we waited in a queue for two hours to buy tickets for the premiere of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. We snatched up some Mars bars and Coca-Colas, and dangled our legs over the side of our seats. Lucille and I had anticipated this opening for some time, wondering how the rather ghastly Brothers Grimm tale would be told to a young audience. But I did not have to think on it for long, because early in the film I was seized with a tightness in my stomach that had nothing to do with evil queens or floating mirrors.

  The prince was the spitting image of Kyle.

  All efforts to keep myself from thinking about him came screeching to a halt. I shifted in my seat and grasped the velvet armrests, daydreaming myself into a world where we had seven small children and lived in a forest. But I couldn’t escape the fact that he was bound for something else, a loveless life. Even if that were not the case, he was forbidden to me in other ways, like a polished red apple, poisonous to the touch. He was a Catholic, a profound restriction in the eyes of my father, and a laborer, quite unsuitable in the eyes of my mother.

  “What’s wrong, Grumpy?” Lucille said later, attempting to pull me from my musings over an ice cream.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that you’ve looked like you’re in another world for weeks now, and that’s not like you. What’s going on?”

  “Nothing. Just thinking about all we have to do for the festival.” As if to prove the point, I pulled my notebook from my handbag and ran my finger down the agenda written in my mother’s perfect, scrolled handwriting. Lucille eyed me suspiciously, but I kept my gaze on the paper. I never lied to my friend, and she was likely to see right through me. At last, she appeared to set aside any doubts as she pulled out her own set of notes.

  Lucille had already proved to be of inestimable value, as her no-nonsense skills kept us all on task. She stayed over at my house for a few nights before the big event and helped me with the last-minute details. She was authoritative in the best of ways, so I nicknamed her “Doc.” When I was ready to quit and go to bed, she called me “Sleepy” and coaxed me back to work.

  “Julianne,” she asked me at breakfast, list and pen in hand. “How many entries did we get for the bread-making contest?”

  I cross-checked my own list. “Fourteen. Which may go up by one if Mrs. Clarke’s daughter is able to make it into town. We can adjust the score sheets closer to the time if necessary.”

  “Right. Do you know if Alice White is making her lemon poppy seed bread again?”

  “I certainly hope so—it’s the best. But do you think I can get out of voting for her? I can just see the look on her face when she wins for the third time.” I raised my chin and peered down my nose at her, but Lucille was all business and gave me no leeway for theatrics.

  “We have twenty thousand things to do before the weekend,” she said. “Did you ever find out from Mrs. Moore and Mrs. Ward what they decided in regards to the ring game?”

  “I think Mrs. Moore won when Reverend Parker got involved. Her idea had been to toss the rings onto tall votive candles with a mock-up of the cathedral in the background.”

  “Yes, I’m sure it’s impossible to defend a clown motif after that.”

  We carried on with the planning until Friday evening. Lucille declined to accept an official role, but she was an indispensable marvel. With her help, we mapped out the site, reminded everyone of their roles, took inventory of supplies, and sneaked more than one biscuit from the bake sale offerings when they came in.

  “Now, the big question—what did you decide to wear for the auction?”

  The auction. I was excited about it more than I wanted to let on. It had begun years ago as a parody of coming-out parties. But instead of introducing debutantes to the marriage market, the auction raised money for charity. The prize was the honor of escorting one of Liverpool’s young ladies to a picnic at Reynolds Park a few weeks later. For the mothers, it held far less importance than the formals did, since you didn’t have to be a real deb to participate. But for the would-be beaus, the competition was as frenzied as bees in a jar. What man passed up the chance to one-up his friends? It had developed into a beloved tradition, and brought in the most proceeds of any activity in the festival lineup.

  This year was my turn, and Lucille had been looking forward to it almost as much as I had. Her January birthday prevented her from participating until next time, and she was poised to lavish me with all of her attention as I prepared for it.

  “I was hoping that you w
ould help me decide,” I said.

  We went upstairs to my wardrobe, where I had two dresses hanging apart from the others. I pulled out the first one, draped it on my arm with exaggerated flair, and introduced it in my best hoity-toity voice, which sounded a bit like an opera singer underwater.

  “We have here a gown of ice-blue satin, with thin ermine fur trim around the V-neck collar. Sleeves are narrow at the shoulder, widening until gathered again at the wrist, again trimmed in the ermine.”

  Lucille pursed her lips and clapped her hands with a feigned propriety.

  “And, to accessorize, silver sandals with heels, nude silk stockings, and matching ice-blue garters, not that anyone will see them.”

  “Stunning,” Lucille effused with another round of soundless applause. “Simply stunning.”

  I laid that one down on the bed and pulled out dress number two. Displaying it on my other arm, I stroked it slowly as if it were a feather.

  “Our next ensemble features a gown of smoky sage green with a curved neckline that hugs the collarbone and cuts dramatically down the back, which is adorned with three layers of pearls. The fabric gathers at the waist and becomes fuller towards the ankles. Again, the silver sandals and nude silk stockings round out this selection with the ice-blue garter, because the store didn’t have one to match it.”

  Lucille rolled back on the floor, amused by both my presentation and my predicament.

  “Well”—she drew out her word as she made a decision—“as devastating as it is to wear a dress without matching garters, you are so right in saying that no one will see them. Therefore, I deem you, Sage Dress, winner of the 1937 Maiden Auction for the Benefit of the Liverpool Anglican Cathedral and the Seaman’s Orphanage.”

  She looked it up and down to confirm her choice.

  “Really, Jul, you know that green is the best color for your eyes, and you want to earn as much money as you can, right?”