Jenny Rose

by Mary Anne Kelly

“What about you? Are you all right?”

  “Me? I’ve just come back from fishing. Out on Shepperton Hyne. We were hoping for eels.” Her eyes shone. “And what did we get but brown trout! One rudd. Five or six pike.”

  “With the handsome Murphy I’ll bet.”

  “Tch. It’s not like we’re doing a line. Seamus was along.” She threw a stick into the bushes. “Anyway, he’s not that handsome.”

  I remembered my last rear view of the surprising Murphy. “No, but he’s pretty cute.”

  We laughed together, she about her things and me, weakly, about mine. The green bracken ledge we’d been walking dropped off to the sea. Below us the turquoise lagoon sparkled.

  “Oh!” I cried. “The fairy ring! I wanted to come here. Liam told me about it. He told me not to go down, though.”

  “This is the fairy ring right here. You’re standing in it.”

  “Gee.” I took a shot from every direction.

  “It’s, you know, where the fairies walk. Their path. If you find yourself in it, you’ll always return to it. If they like you, that is. If they don’t”—she shrugged—“bad luck, indeed.”

  I stood very still in the wind, breathing in and hearkening those fairies, making peace with them and even asking them … what? I closed my eyes and the sky went white behind my lids. My wish wouldn’t wish, as it were. Whoever I was kidding, it certainly wasn’t me. I opened my eyes, the moment passed. But I promised myself that if I ever did have that chance again, I would wish.

  “Now you must throw a stone into the water,” Jenny Rose yelled above the wind.

  I was frightened to get too close to the edge. I thought the wind would blow me over.

  “Go on,” she shouted.

  I looked at her, her hair whipping wildly about her small head, her Gypsy eyes lit with excitement. I hesitated. She threw back her head and laughed again wildly and I thought—gulp—maybe she really is mad.

  I picked up a smooth rail of flint anyway and chucked it over the side. A startled crane shot out from its nest on the side of the cliff. We ran away, screaming with laughter.

  It wasn’t windy at all when you moved away from the edge. We slowed down and walked amiably. After a while I said, “Jenny Rose, I’ve seen your paintings. Some of them. They’re wonderful. Why won’t you go on to university and study art?”

  “Look. I’m not goin’ to go sit in a classroom anymore. I’ve had enough.”

  “Don’t. Don’t say that. You’re too smart not to know it would be all different from dreadful high school. Different people. More freedom. You can’t think you know all there is to know!”

  “I’m not smart at all! I’m bloody awful at figures. It would take me twenty years to figure out a year’s maths. And you need that to get by. Anyway, school here in Skibbereen wasn’t dreadful at all. The nuns were great fun. And sharp. Really, I’ll miss the old Convent of Mercy. And the Art Center always had my stuff up. Only now I’m quite past it and we haven’t the money to send me abroad. I thought I might have but now…” She bit her lip.

  She didn’t want to say now that Dierdre was alive, I guessed.

  “… and I’d have to go up to bloody Cork to—”

  “What? Where everybody knows you?” I was sorry the minute I said it.

  Jenny Rose whirled about. “I thought I told you. The only cowards in this story are not on this side of the Atlantic! I thought you understood that I don’t and never have been ashamed of what I am and what I want to do. And I’ll tell you something else. I was never even ashamed of Dierdre for being a lesbian. Never. You can—”

  “Dierdre’s a lesbian?”

  “What? Did you just ask me if—what, you are really dense. You’re joking, right?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I can’t believe you’re saying this!”

  “No, I mean I knew,” I bumbled. “Well, I figured … I mean—”

  “You had no idea!”

  “No. Yes. You’re right. I had no idea.”

  “What did you think all that talk of Peg not loving her and running off with her ticket were about?”

  I stared at her, the glimmerings of understanding taking hold in my sludge of a brain.

  “Never mind”—Jenny Rose patted me on the shoulder—“hopeless old auntie.”

  I do believe that’s when she started to like me a bit.

  “Somebody has to be naive,” she mumbled.

  “I’m not naive. I’m a jerk.”

  “Yes, well, never mind.” She smiled at me.

  “Does your grandmother know about this?”

  She stopped grinning. “You mean your mother?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Sure.”

  “How?” I stood still.

  Jenny Rose laughed. “All of Skibbereen knows. Always have. Dierdre and Peg have been together for years. You don’t talk about it. It’s just the way things are.”

  “She knew even before she let Carmela give you up to them?”

  “Certainly. It would have been pretty hard to have missed it. Oh, I know all the stories. You hear them talking, over the years and all. See, years ago, it was always the four of them, Peg and the three sisters.” Jenny Rose ticked off on her fingers, “Peg, Dierdre, Bridey and Mary. Peg was the intelligent one, I’m sorry to tell ya. All notes and figures. I think it started off she was tutoring your mom with her maths. That’s why they all took to her. She was very in charge. No one thought she was gay.” She cracked up, laughing. “If they even had a name for it, then. Nobody even thought of it. Your grandmother thought she was a good, sensible influence. Not silly and flighty, like Dierdre. Down-to-earth, more. Yes, they all loved Peg, at first. A hearty, plain girl. She and Dierdre both loved to ride.”

  “And what were the rest of them like?”

  “Well, Dierdre was all airs and graces. Sort of fanciful. Not all battered about the eyes the way she is now. High hopes, Dierdre always had. Frills and a charm bracelet. Still wears a lot of pink.”

  “You always called her Dierdre?”

  “Yeah.” She met my eye with a glint of challenge. “Always. It wasn’t what you think, that I was holding out for my ‘real’ mother to come or anything like that. Not at all. It was because Dierdre wanted to be forever young. Know what I mean? So, your mom was the practical one, they always said. Had her hope chest full of linens all embroidered and ready to go the day your father asked her, Aunt Bridey said. Always knew what she wanted, your mom did.”

  Had my mom been scared away? I smiled. That hope chest was with her to this day. Now it housed Mary’s winter sweaters, wrapped in dry cleaner paper and sprinkled with lavender.

  “Anyway”—Jenny rose yawned—“Aunt Bridey was the sour one. It’s not me who made that up. They all say that. Old iron eyebrows. And she of all of them shouldn’t be. I mean, Uncle Ned is a darling. And she has Bernadette and Liam, all grown. She’s got the great house to boot.”

  “How come she got the big house?”

  Jenny Rose made an elbows-out, pushing-away movement.

  “Oh.”

  “Aunt Mary’d gone to America and then Aunt Bridey got married to Ned. Ooh, the minute she got pregnant, she had Ned redo the little house for Dierdre. Dierdre was delighted to go, I think. Aunt Bridey isn’t an easy one to live with.”

  We both laughed.

  “And Dierdre, my mom, she’s pretty bossy herself.”

  I thought of the frazzled woman who’d arrived last night from Paris. I tried to imagine her young. It wasn’t hard. She must have radiated life and fun. “So Dierdre got the little house. I guess it was nice to start out fresh.”

  “She and Peg were what you’d call best friends.”

  “They lived together?”

  “No, not like that. Well, there was me. The sisters thought I should be brought up at least with the appearance of propriety. So that’s how it was. Peg always had her own cottage”—she turned and pointed—“just over the hill.” She looked away into the dista
nce. “They used to go off together at night for a stroll. Always had their heads together. Just them and Brownie. Oh, they were great for going out. They’d be down the beach, walkin’ along. Grand walkers they were, too. Or up on Scull Road, as far over as Abbeystrewery, where the potato famine graves are. Peg loved it over there. You ought to go there, you know. That’s worth seeing.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. About nine thousand bodies in that grave. One thrown in on top of the other. It’s a sorry place. I can’t imagine famine. I love to eat. You?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So, Tuesday’s they had their slim-making class at Nancy’s. Wednesday’s were for bingo. Thursday, hearts. Friday they had bowling. Sundays, walk to Abbeystrewery. They were always up to something. It’s rare … I mean it was rare to find them at home.”

  “What did she do? I mean, how did she make a living?”

  “Peg? She worked at the bank. Took her car in, most days. Gee, I wonder what will happen to the car? She was dead respectable. I mean, they both were. They’ve lasted longer than most regular marriages. Dierdre had her loom, of course.”

  “Loom?”

  “She made her own cloth. She wove. Didn’t you know? I’m surprised your mother never mentioned it. She made a good enough living at it. Not great, mind you. It’s a terrible loss that the loom is gone. That was what you’d call ‘an heirloom.’ Sounds odd, doesn’t it? I think your great-great-grandfather made it.” She wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “Always after me to get a job, Peg was. Now the loom’s gone, I don’t know what we’ll do.” She looked at me squarely. “I didn’t like to ask, but I hope there’ll be insurance money. And I do hope Peg has left us the lot.”

  We walked along.

  “Lesbians,” I said.

  “You sound so shocked.” She threw a stick at the bush.

  “Not so much that they were lesbians. Just at my mother’s knowing it.”

  “Must be awful to have that kind of a mom.”

  “What kind?”

  “Secretive.”

  Funny her saying that to me, I thought, and not the other way around. “Is it because of Murphy that you don’t want to go away?” I asked.

  She didn’t answer me for a minute, just walked along. Then she hung her head and said, “I’m not the one for him.”

  “That can’t be true!” I cried, and meant it, despite the fact he was obviously screwing Bernadette, which was different. That was vulgar. It was almost perverted. Bernadette seemed to go about these things in such a businesslike way. As though Willy were one more notch in a favorite belt. It surely wasn’t love. On the other hand, there was something innately pure about Jenny Rose. She might act jaded, but she wasn’t. She was pure.

  “I saw him look at you last night,” I said. I wouldn’t dare say what else I saw. Let’s face it, single men have often been known to take what’s offered them. Married men too, I remembered with a tug.

  “That’s pity.” Jenny Rose put her arm on her head. “He thinkin’ my mother dead. He knows what it’s like, him losin’ his granddad and his dad in one year.” She shook her head. “He has a great voluminous heart, he does.”

  “No. Sorry. That wasn’t pity I saw him look at you with. That was lust,” I lied. What I had really seen was love, but I knew the word lust would make more of an impression. Young girls want lust, not love.

  “Ya?” She peeked up at me with that mischievous, lopsided grin. “You think so?”

  “There was no mistaking it,” I said.

  “Anyway.” Her face clouded. “Even if he did care for me, there’d be no convincin’ his mother. She’s that against me. Oh, no, she has higher hopes for her William.”

  “Call me newfangled, but the last time I noticed, guys got to pick out their own gals.”

  “I know. But it never works out when everything’s against you from the start.”

  “What about ‘love conquers all’? Heh?”

  “Spoken like a true film-going American.”

  We were already at Dayday’s. The shutters were closed up tight. “There’s a new one,” Jenny Rose said. “Maybe she went into Cork with the lot of them.”

  “It’s funny she’s not here?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Maybe she got drunk and she’s still sleeping.”

  “Don’t be silly. Dayday may be untidy, but she’s reliable.” She tried the shutter but it didn’t even rattle. “It’s just strange. She sleeps in but she’ll never lock up.”

  I shot her a glance.

  “What?”

  “No. Just wondering why you didn’t go with Dierdre and them into Cork.”

  “Phh. Not me,” she said primly. “I’m not your party girl.”

  “Well, come on, then, let’s head back,” I said.

  “Fuck it,” she said. “Let’s go into Skibbereen and go to O’Donovan’s. They’re always up and about.”

  “What, walk? Which road?”

  “You take this one here”—she pointed with the toe of her boot—“and I’ll take this other one, and if you get to the crossroads first, you put up a fine stone to show you were there. And if I get there first I’ll knock it down.”

  We regarded each other.

  “The bus will be along directly.” She held my eyes with her hazel ones twinkling. “I can hear it comin’.”

  “I haven’t even brushed my teeth, though.”

  “So? It’s across the road from the cattle market. I assure you your breath won’t create a stir.”

  “Okay.” I shrugged.

  Just then the bus bellowed up. “Here she is”—Jenny Rose threw her cigarette wrapper onto the ground—“all clatter and outdated logos!”

  “And dust.” I coughed and we climbed aboard. There, in the same spot as the day before, dressed exactly the same, sat Fiona Ferry, the lady with the broken foot. She waved to me, gilly gilly, as we lurched to the back of the bus.

  “Yes, I know,” Jenny Rose said before I had the chance to say a word. “It’s what Miss Ferry does, like. She rides to and fro.”

  “All day?”

  “Every day.”

  “Poor thing.”

  “Why ‘poor’? She’s quite happy.”

  “She has nothing else.”

  “Sure she does. It’s just what she likes to do, see?”

  “And at night?”

  “One presumes she goes home and rinses out her dress. Gives it a pressing.”

  “Oh,” I said, crashing into the last seat. The ride to Skibbereen was swift and bumpy. You had to hold on to the seat in front of you. That and the racing on the wrong side of the road. I still wasn’t used to that.

  “I’ve got to stop off at Auntie Molly’s on the way back,” I said as we sailed past her cottage. “I told her I’ll take a room there and then Aunt Bridey took offense and I’d better—”

  “Oh, you’ll not be a bother, now. Now there’ll be no wake to worry over.”

  “Gosh, that’s right,” I said. “Well, I’d better stop and tell her I won’t be coming, then.” I was somehow disappointed. It was such a pretty cottage. Finally to take residence inside a picture-perfect house. And I’d liked Molly.

  “Sure, we can send Liam with that bit of news.”

  “No,” I said. “I think I’d like to do that myself.”

  We got off in Skibbereen and O’Donovan’s was right there, a tiny blue and purple café with a bay window. Across the street and down an alley was the cattle market, a sort of indoor amphitheater where they’d parade the livestock for auction. She took me in there for a bit and I got a couple of shots. I didn’t like to stay once they noticed us. Not that their expressions changed any. “Come on.” She nudged me and we walked out the alley to the street. One farmer was already done; he sat in the middle of O’Donovan’s, drunk and blithering. He wanted his tea, though, and the young girl brought it to him, warily sidestepping his long legs thrown out across the floor.

  We got to sit right in the window. I looked out
at Bridge Street and the dotty shops. An old fellow in a cardigan swept the curb. His allergic dog loped along beside him, stopping every couple of steps to scratch his riddled hide. The dust churned up around them in the sunny air.

  “So what was poor Peg like?” I asked.

  “Peg?” She opened her shirt and pulled out some seaweed. “Peg was a lot of things.”

  “Well I mean was she big? Small? Angry? Happy? Nice? Mean?”

  “Happy. Yes, she was happy. All the time. It was enough to make you chuck. Efficient. Orderly. All her closets soldier neat.”

  “I wonder was she gay because she was genetically attracted to women or attracted to women because of an aversion to men.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like, did someone put her off, like a father who was drunk and made advances when she was very young … that sort of thing.”

  The girl came over. Jenny Rose ordered a pot of very strong tea. She looked us over and walked away.

  “You’re jokin’.”

  “Just thinking out loud,” I muttered.

  “Jesus. Well. She was such a buxom, sexy thing.”

  “Worth a thought, then.” I looked up.

  “Hmm. Her father was a bit of a pig.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Big drinker. Lofty.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Ooh. And mean when he was riled.”

  “Was he? Might have been frustrated. Holding it all in, year after year. Trying to be good.”

  “You really are a rip. Missy Freud.”

  “Well. You never know. Shall I have the soda biscuits and tea or the shepherd’s pie?”

  “Have the oxtail soup. It’s a dream.”

  “I don’t think I could do that.”

  “No? Have the biscuits. They’ve lovely blackberry currants that go with it. You’re safe there.” She sighed and sank down onto her seat. “I like this place. Peg always made us eat down the road at Field’s. She always had to have the same thing. Drove me mad. Then she’d tally up the bill as we ordered. Each item would go down in her little charty book.”

  “Ah. Glad she’s gone?”

  “Yeah.” She dropped the fork she was drumming. “I mean I’m glad it’s her and not Dierdre.”

  “Having not known her, I can’t say I blame you. Oh, please don’t look so shocked. I mean it’s awful when someone’s pleased with themselves all the time. It’s hard to be around them.”