Searching for Pemberley

by Mary Lydon Simonsen

  As expected, Beth took the news of my leaving graciously and said I would be with the Crowell family in spirit at Christmastime. Jack said nothing, creating an uncomfortable silence. Finally, Michael suggested we all go down to the Hare and Hound for drinks, but both parents begged off, citing fatigue from the wedding reception.

  “Don't worry about Dad, Maggie,” Michael said. “He's not the most articulate man. I know he's sorry to see you go; he just doesn't know how to express it.”

  When I went to my room, there was a note on my desk from Jack, asking if I would join him for breakfast at 7:30.

  I'd like to talk to you, so it will be just the two of us. Jack

  The change in the weather had brought a biting wind with it, but even so, Jack and I decided to walk to the village. The inn had a fair amount of people eating breakfast in their dining room, but there had been a definite drop-off since the fall colors had faded. After our tea arrived, Jack said, “You know me well enough to know I'm not an emotional man—not on the surface, anyway—but your news, well, it upset me. It's one thing to have your sons go off, but you expect boys to leave.”

  Jack stopped talking for several minutes and just stared into the fire before saying, “Beth and I had a little girl. We knew from the day she was born that she would—that she would be leaving us. Just one short week. That's all the time we had.” Looking at his hand, he said, “She was the smallest baby I ever saw. After losing Tom and Beth's brothers, well, it was too much. I thought God was punishing me, but last year, when I met you… You see, you're exactly the same age our Jenny would have been.”

  Jack took a check out of his pocket and slid it across the table. “I called Pan American Airlines, and they told me that was how much a one-way ticket between New York and London costs.” The check was for several hundred pounds, and I shook my head.

  “Maggie, I grew up in a house where everyone knew their place. Because of that, I always felt boxed in. I was lucky in that Sir Edward saw potential in me and paid my expenses at The Tech. But, you see, it was still his decision.” Tapping the check, he continued, “I'm hoping you will use the money to come back to us, but if that's not your choice, then that money is there for you to start out wherever you want. I would have done the same for our Jenny. Please take it.”

  I had to excuse myself and go to the ladies' room. I was crying for so many reasons. I didn't want to leave the Crowells because they had provided me with love and affection. Beth had done her best to act the part of my mother without usurping her role. But Jack was another story. My father was a man who had been raised in a house where men didn't show affection. The emotional pounding he had taken from his father had left a man who always seemed to be watching his family from a distance. It had literally been years since my dad had hugged me, and the comparison between Jack and my father was breaking my heart.

  If that wasn't emotional enough, Jack and I walked down to the World War I memorial on the village green. There were ten names listed on the plaque, including Arnie Ferguson, the older brother of Montclair's gardener; David Rivers, the brother of the owner of the Inn; Trevor and Matthew Lacey; and Michael Thomas Crowell. I hadn't known that Michael had been named after Jack's brother.

  “When Tom was still a lad, there was a footman named Mike below stairs, so everyone took to calling my brother by his middle name. Our Michael is named after Tom, and James is named after me, James Abel Crowell or JAC, Jack.”

  Puzzled looks greeted us when we got back to the house. Both Michael and Beth could see I had been crying, but neither asked any questions.

  The following morning, Michael drove me to the Sheffield Station. Before leaving, I asked that he drop me off at the car park and not go into the station. I had barely recovered from Jack's story, and Beth had lost a gallant effort not to cry. I was already emotionally spent, and I didn't want to start bawling in the station. I was turning into a real crybaby.

  As soon as Michael cut the engine, he jumped out, opened my door, and took my luggage to the entrance to the station. “A telegram would be nice once you get to your parents' house.”

  I nodded. I wasn't trusting my voice. With people milling all around us, I kissed him for as long as decency would allow, and then I went into the station to begin my long journey home.

  December 15th was a brilliantly clear day at the small airport north of London that was used by the government to ferry its diplomats and officials around the world. On the plane, the seating had all of the bigwigs up front in comfortable chairs with tables. The little people sat in reclining chairs in the rear of the plane which, I was shortly to learn, was where turbulence was felt the most.

  The pilot announced over the intercom that our flight plan would take us over Iceland, across the Atlantic to Newfoundland, where we would refuel, and finally down the East Coast of the United States to our final destination at National Airport in Washington. Except for some early queasiness, I did quite well compared to my sea voyage from Philadelphia to Hamburg. I fell asleep over Iceland and didn't awake until we were told we were landing.

  During the flight, Rand checked on me every couple of hours but gave no indication he wanted to chat. Once we landed, he said it would be about two hours before we would go on to Washington, and he invited me to go into the terminal for a cup of coffee. On the walls were photos of battles in which Newfoundlanders had fought in The Great War: Arras, Vimy Ridge, Cambrai, Gallipoli. But it was the Battle of Beaumont-Hamel on the Somme that was forever linked with the 1st Newfoundland Regiment. Pointing to a quote by Major General Sir Beauvoir de Lisle, Rand said, “That explains it all.”

  It was a magnificent display of trained and disciplined valour, and its assault only failed of success because dead men can advance no further.

  The regiment went over the top on July 1, 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme. When they had time to count their losses, they found that of the eight-hundred men who had gone into battle, fewer than seventy men answered at roll call. In thirty minutes, the regiment had lost ninety percent of its strength. I thought about Tom Crowell, who had also gone over the top on that awful day. It not only took his life, but it changed his brother forever.

  As soon as we took off, my eyes were glued to the window. I wasn't sure of the distance between Newfoundland and the United States, but I wasn't going to miss seeing any part of the country I had left more than two years earlier. When the pilot announced we had entered the air space of the United States, I had goose bumps. As we traveled down the East Coast, he pointed out the Gaspe Peninsula, Boston, and Providence. From my window, I could see the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor and the Empire State Building, and after flying over Philadelphia and Baltimore, I could feel the plane losing altitude in preparation for landing.

  It was then I caught sight of the Jefferson Memorial and the Tidal Basin. It was in this city that my first venture into the adult world had begun in June 1944. When I had arrived at Union Station on that hot summer day, I didn't know what direction my life would take. Now, I was returning to my home country a different person but still unsure of my future. That had to change. I couldn't continue with such uncertainty. Like Michael had said, it was time to make a decision.

  Chapter 42

  ST. PATRICK'S DAY MAY be the occasion most Americans associate with the Irish, but it is the wake that comes closest to capturing the emotional complexity of that long-suffering race. Living in isolated homesteads in Ireland, many saw their neighbors only when they had received word that someone had died. Fueled by poteen, a potent home-brewed liquor, the wake took on the celebratory nature of a reunion. If the deceased wasn't one of your loved ones, an Irish wake could provide some of the best entertainment in town, and it certainly was well attended.

  As soon as I arrived in Minooka, I immediately went to see my aunt. Although she was in the last days of her life, Aunt Marie greeted me with a feisty, “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! Now I know I'm dying, if they sent for you.” Taking hold of my hand, she said, �
��Don't look so worried. I've had the last rites twice before, but I'm still alive, and Father Kelly's dead and buried.”

  It was obvious Aunt Marie wasn't going to leave this world without a fight, but it was a fight she was going to lose. The air in coal towns is hard on everyone's lungs, but most especially on those of miners and ladies from another era, who passed their evenings rocking on front porches while smoking their pipes.

  In the last week of her life, my aunt drifted in and out of consciousness. In her lucid moments, she spoke of her childhood on the beautiful shores of Loch Corrib in the west of Ireland, as well as some of the more memorable of the hundreds of her students, including my parents, who had passed through her classroom from the time she had begun teaching in Minooka in 1887. She insisted that her only regret was not returning to Galway, but there was no way that she would have left Minooka with her sister and brother up on the hill in the church cemetery.

  The Egan Funeral Home did a nice job with Aunt Marie, and I'm sure she would have been pleased at how good she looked, with curled hair and wearing her best dress, a pale blue A-line, with matching pumps, and a faux diamond brooch given to her at the time of her retirement.

  Aunt Marie had died two days earlier, and her open casket was in our parlor for what was to be the first of two days of viewing for family and friends. Three members of the Sodality of Mary, dressed from head to toe in black, had arrived to lead the mourners in the rosary, and Sally Bluegoose, who had once run a hole-in-the-wall, selling whiskey to the miners, started keening. “Wora, wora, wora!” A banshee crying from the hills of Connemara could not have done a better job.

  My father, who did not get along with Aunt Marie, nevertheless was busy toasting her memory. While Dad put away another one, my mother was setting out more food for the mourners, all the while trying not to cry because there was just too much to do.

  Most of the men were gathered in the parlor, talking politics or telling stories about their days as slate pickers at the breaker or as mule drivers before reaching an age where they were old enough to go underground and work “down in the hole.” The women were either helping in the kitchen or were gathered in a circle around the coffin gossiping, but in quiet voices, so as not “to wake the dead.”

  Along the back wall were the ancient ones, those who still spoke Irish and who punctuated their speech with their clay pipes while enjoying “a drop of the creature.” Grandpa Joyce was among the few abstaining because thirty years earlier, at the request of his pastor, he had taken an oath of abstinence. It was too bad Father Loughran hadn't asked him to be nicer to his family.

  Through the kitchen window, I could see the perpetual glow from a fire on Downes Mountain fueled by an inexhaustible supply of coal from below. There was nothing that better served as a reminder that I was back in Minooka than the pervasive smell of sulfur that was the signature of every town in the hard-coal country of eastern Pennsylvania.

  Patrick had picked me up at the Lackawanna Station, and his first words to me were, “Where's your cowboy? I don't see a ring, and you know what they say, 'It don't mean a thing if you ain't got that ring.'”

  “How's your love life, Pat?” I asked, knowing that most mothers wouldn't allow him to darken their doors. Even with a stellar service record in the Navy, including a commendation for bravery when his ship had been torpedoed near Cuba, mothers had long memories when it came to their daughters.

  “I don't have one. No one in particular, that is,” he said, smiling like the Cheshire cat. “I like to share the wealth.”

  “In other words, no one will go out with you.”

  Patrick started to say something when I asked him to stop. “For God's sake, we haven't made it to the city line, and we're already fighting. Can you just give it a rest?” After taking a deep breath, I asked him how Aunt Marie was.

  “She's dying.”

  “Really, Patrick? Thanks for the news bulletin.”

  “Mom thinks it's only a matter of days.”

  “How's J.J.?”

  John Joseph Mulkerin had come to Minooka from Ireland in the 1870s as a ten-year-old orphan. He had been delivered by an emigrating adult from his village to his father's cousin, Mary Coyne, who “didn't have a pot to pee in.” But J.J. was so engaging that the whole town had adopted him. After he got a job as a mailman, he became a hot item because he was employed and he wasn't a miner. But J.J. had eyes only for my Aunt Marie. What on earth would he do without her?

  “Aunt Marie's never alone,” Patrick continued. “Mom or Aunt Agatha fix her meals every day, and the neighbors are taking turns checking up on her. She wouldn't let J.J. spend the night because it would be 'indacent,'” he said, mimicking Aunt Marie's brogue that had survived her sixty years in America. “At 8:00, he pretends he's leaving, and she pretends he's not in the next room.” According to the little man with the big heart, they had been dating for forty years, and he proposed to her every year on her birthday.

  “Grandpa's looking forward to seeing you again,” Patrick said, smiling. “He just found out where you've been living. He thought you were still in Germany.”

  When we pulled into the alley behind the house, I was overwhelmed by a flood of memories, especially of my grandmother. All summer long, Grandma would be in the garden checking on her tomatoes and other vegetables to make sure they had ripened to perfection. While Grandma was out in the garden, my mother would be in the kitchen, peeling, slicing, or boiling potatoes, which was what she was doing when I came through the door. I had not seen her since August 1946.

  Mom looked much older. Added to the daily stress of living with a husband who drank too much and a father-in-law who raised meanness to an art was the strain of caring for my Aunt Marie. But Mom had an inner strength whose source was her unshakeable faith in her church and her belief that everything happened for a reason, according to God's plan. We had been having a good cry when my Grandpa, sitting in his usual place by the coal stove, woke up.

  “I thought you be dead,” he said.

  In order to keep peace in the house, I needed to come up with a reason why I had been in England, the home of his enemy, for more than a year. But I thought it best to keep it simple. “The U.S. Government gave a lot of money to the British during the war, and there had to be some accountability on how the money had been spent.” That was the truth. It just didn't have anything to do with me.

  After a long silence, Grandpa finally said, “That be a good thing. Those teeving bastards need watching.” And he went back to sleep.

  At the end of their workday, Dad and Sadie came home, and my sister grabbed me and spun me around. We had grown up sleeping in the same bed, which provided numerous opportunities to share stories as well as our hopes for the future. As for my dad, he came over and put his arm around my shoulder, and all he said was, “Welcome home, M'acushla.”

  “Katie and little Jimmy are coming in from Jersey tomorrow to spend time with Aunt Marie,” my mother said.

  And that brought me back to the reason why I had left England. It also reminded me that I was now on the same continent as Rob. When I sent my telegram to Michael, I would send one to Rob as well letting him know that I was on his side of the Atlantic, and I wondered what, if anything, he would do.

  After a long evening of catching up with a steady stream of friends and family welcoming me home, I finally went upstairs. Inside the door of my bedroom was a little holy water fountain screwed into the wall above the light switch, and the walls were covered with pictures of the Virgin Mary and the Sacred Heart, which made me realize that I was back under the aegis of Father Lynch. Before I left England, I had gone to confession because I wasn't about to go into the confessional with Father Lynch. Not only would I have to confess that Rob and I had had sex, but I would have to estimate how many times we did it. Sackcloth and ashes would have been too easy a penance for someone who was obviously a loose woman.

  The upstairs was heated by grates that opened to the kitchen below. During the night, when
the fire in the coal stove had died down, the room was freezing, but for the time being, it was warm enough so that Sadie and I could talk. When I left Minooka in 1944, I was nineteen and Sadie was fifteen. In those four years, Sadie had easily become the prettiest girl in town. Although we shared the same physical characteristics—black hair, blue eyes, and fair skin—Sadie's hair was blacker, her eyes were bigger and bluer, and at five-foot-six, she was four inches taller than I was. If she had a flaw, it was her habit of saying exactly what was on her mind. In the two years I had been overseas, that hadn't changed.

  “What happened with Rob?”

  Should I tell my little sister that Rob and I were over, and how would I explain Michael? But then I decided to go for it, and I told the story of Michael's waxing and Rob's waning.

  “Oh my God! My sister, St. Margaret Mary Joyce, had a flirtation with another guy while she was dating someone else?” Actually, after our time together on the sofa in the study, referring to it as a flirtation was probably no longer accurate, but I wasn't going to tell Sadie that. “Going overseas really did change you. You used to be a real stick in the mud, so this is definitely a change for the better.”

  One of the people I had missed the most while I was in Europe was my cousin, Bobby, who owned an Esso gas station with my brother on the main road between Wilkes-Barre and Scranton. Before sitting down in the office, I took out a handkerchief and placed it over the split red-vinyl chair. Bobby opened the vending machine and tossed a bag of M&Ms to me. We were alone, because Patrick was out picking up tires.