The other end of the lane! Yes, that must be where the showers and toilets are situated. Alas, it is too late for a slow torturous trip up the lane in shoes that wobbled and threatened to sprain the ankles. Kate, you have brought me down to a level of discomfort and embarrassment, which previous to this I have never had to endure.
Genevieve remembered walking in the countryside as a child with her parents, and when the need presented itself, there was always the privacy of hedges. Now she must use the drain. Afterwards she would pour some water from the jug into the wash hand bowl, wash her hands, and throw the water down the drain.
Genevieve remembered her father being firm with her when she was a child. Eoin, however, never found fault with Kate. I was the one that had to discipline her. Then after he died, Kate began associating with those unsavory Gillespie boys, who Rory tells me were nice children.
I may have been wrong about not consulting Kate on the clothes she wore, but she was too young to know what clothing best suited her. Kate’s life would have been much, much better if she had married Eamon Talbot. He loved her. He is a good and caring man. She would have remained in Gory where she belonged. I could have planned her wedding. I would have been with her at the birth of their child, and given her all the help she needed. If Eoin had not spoiled her and taken her away from me, we could have been best friends.
Kate didn’t come to me when she found herself pregnant. Can’t say I blame her. I thought only very loose and stupid girls got pregnant without marriage. My beautiful daughter is neither stupid nor immoral. How could a man have treated Kate like that man did? How differently we see things when they land on our own doorsteps. Her father would have handled this situation much better. He would have welcomed her home with a loving hug. I couldn’t manage that. I don’t recall either of my parents ever hugging me. This lack of mine must have hurt Eoin who effortlessly reach out to the children and me. His grandfather would have loved little Eoin. But then Eoin would have doted on any child of Kate’s regardless of how it came it entered the world.
Will little Eoin like the special gift I’ve brought for him? But then, I’ve brought it more to establish a relationship with my daughter than as a gift for the child.
Suddenly the door was thrust open. Eoin burst in and came to an abrupt halt when he saw his grandmother. Then he rushed out leaving the door open. She could hear the hurried words of warning coming from the child, “Momma, the lady that doesn’t like us is in our cottage.”
Kate uttered something that Genevieve could not hear. Momma here? What could possibly have happened to bring her here?
Kate hurried forward expecting some sort of disaster. Entering the cottage, Kate put down the bottle of milk she had been carrying, and turning to her mother, softly asked. “Is everything all right, Momma?”
“Yes, but obviously not between the boy and myself.”
“He only met you once, and it was not a good occasion,” Kate suddenly feeling tired, answered flatly. She suppressed the urge to raise her voice and state, I thought something horrible had happened and all you can offer in response to the fright you gave me is that your relationship with my son is not a particularly good one.
“What a bad impression I left. Perhaps if he’ll let me, I can improve on that first impression.”
Kate looked at her son and smiled. “Let’s begin over again.”
“Momma, this is my son, Eoin.”
“It is nice to meet you again, and I hope we can be friends,” his grandmother said as she shook hands with the boy.
“Eoin, this is your grandmother.”
“Hello, Grandmother.”
“Well, now that’s a good beginning,” Kate smiled.
“I brought you a birthday present,” Genevieve said, taking it out of her shopping bag. The shape of the wrapped gift revealed its contents. Yet the boy patiently unwrapped the hurling stick. In the bottom of the bag was the ball.
“Well, do you already have a hurling stick and ball?” Genevieve asked the boy.
Not wanting to displease this strange woman, Eoin looked at his mother, who rescued him.
“Now that you have two sticks, you can keep one here and the other at the farm instead of bringing the hurling stick back and forth on the bus,” Kate told her son with enthusiasm, and he smiled at her.
“Should I leave the one Grandpa Eoin gave me at the farm with Grandpa Ned and Grandma Mary, or should I leave this new one there?” Eoin asked, unaware of the confusion he was creating.
“That is your choice, Eoin.” Kate smiled.
Genevieve was perplexed. Grandpa Eoin! There’s some mix-up.
“Kate, what is the child talking about? The grandparents at the farm are your husband’s relatives, I presume, but his grandpa Eoin is dead!”
“No, he’s not,” the boy answered angrily. “No, he’s not,” Eoin repeated, and put the hurling stick and ball back in the bag. With his foot he pushed it towards Genevieve.
Kate intervened.
“An old man who lives a few cottages up from ours known as Old Man O’Toole, or Old O, is Mr. Eoin O’Toole. He is a very good and kind person and has been a tremendous help to me. He is also a close relative of Francis. Because of this, and also because I did not want Eoin referring to him as Old O, Eoin calls him Grandpa Eoin, which is an apt name for this man we’ve both come to love.”
Genevieve sat quietly in the chair thinking. My daughter and grandson have a life apart from me, a life that I have had no part of. Her wish was to establish closer ties to her daughter, but she was feeling more cut off from her than ever. Then she remembered the other gift. Opening her handbag, she took out a small box and handed it to Kate.
“I want my grandson to have this, and I wish you to give it to him when he is old enough to receive it.”
Kate opened the unwrapped elegant box and gasped when she saw what it contained.
“Daddy’s pocket watch!”
“When the boys were young, and we were living in Dublin, he had a very busy practice and did not have much time for them. We moved a few years before you were born, and his practice took on an easier pace. He taught you how to tell time with this pocket watch.”
“Yes, he would open it and ask that I tell him the time. Oh, Momma, I haven’t seen this watch in so long.” Tears flooded her eyes. “You want my son to one day own this watch?”
Genevieve nodded in response.
Momma had come here to a place she must have had difficulty finding to make amends for the awkward situation at Gory. Kate thought she had given the watch to Kiernan. In giving the watch to Eoin, she accepted him as her grandson.
Kate bending down on her knees to be at the same level as her mother, who was sitting on a chair. She hugged her mother, whereupon, Kate, for the first time ever, saw her mother cry.
Moments later, brushing the tears from her cheeks, Kate opened the watch and held it for Eoin to see. Kate told him, “Grandma Genevieve, who as you know is my Momma, wants you to have this very precious gift from her and my father whose name you bear. I shall keep it for you until you are old enough to receive this special inheritance.”
Eoin who had been looking on at this encounter between his mother and grandmother, saw no one fall, no one was hurt, yet he saw an unusual and bewildering sight. These were tears of a different kind. It was, in fact, through their tears of joy, more than their hugs that he knew these two women loved each other. From that moment this new grandmother in his life became very special to him.
CHAPTER 11
A dark cloud of drastic change hung over the people of the lane. Conversations were saturated with unanswered questions.
The government, in its collective wisdom, or lack thereof, decided to demolish all the dwellings in the lane. In the ’40s when TB was rampant, and too many people shared a bed in overcrowded living spaces, this might have been a good idea, but now in the ’50s with none but two large families remaining, and TB eradicated, this action seemed an outrage to the people of the lane.
All pleas to let this small community survive fell on deaf ears.
In what order would they leave? Where in Dublin would their new accommodations be? Could they still attend the church they and their families had for generations attended? How far would they be from a hospital and stores? Would any of them ever again be in walking distance of their beloved strand?
With only a few days notice, they were informed that the demolition would begin the following Monday. The three families—an elderly couple, an unmarried brother and sister, a widow and her retarded son for whom the government had found living quarters would be the first to leave.
Kate got together with the women of the lane to have a farewell party to ease the pain of their loss. They would bring all their kitchen tables and chairs and line them up in two lines, closed off at each end by table and chairs, making a large O shape. This would be done approximately a half an hour before the meal would be brought out.
Kate bought legs of lamb and a large goose, which the women cooked along with potatoes, turnips, stuffing, and gravy from both meats. Kate made a trifle with enough sherry in it to blunt what they were forced to prepare for and leave a happy memory of their time together in the lane.
It was a year after Genevieve McCormack’s visit and an appropriate time for such an event—October, a time when the hard work of gathering the harvest is completed and celebrated in farmhouses across the country. The weather had been beautiful for several days, and the sun shone down on them on Sunday morning a few hours before the noontime meal.
Everyone was in great spirits, as though they had not a care in the world. Dermot Donovan played his fiddle while waiting for the meal to be put on the tables. The meat was carved and piled onto platters, bowls of potatoes and turnips were brought to the tables, and each person brought their own cutlery, plate, cup and saucer as all dwellers of the lane sat down together for their first and last time. To the surprise of all, O’Toole, having accepted Kate’s invitation, sat down beside young Eoin and Kate to join his fellow neighbors for the feast.
“It’s a ‘bring your own poison.’” Kate had told O’Toole, who nodded in response.
By the amount of bottles on the tables that day, Kate figured each man brought enough for himself and his wife, and also enough to keep a couple of neighbors well supplied throughout the day. Much laughter and merriment accompanied the meal. Tomorrow would have its cares and woes; this day was meant for happiness.
As the meal wound down, the remaining meat was removed from the table, and a gentle rain fell—a misty rain, in which one could visualize chanting Druids of old walking. No one left the table. The women poured the tea, and the people covered it with their saucers until they were ready to drink it. The story telling continued, as did the joke telling. Peg’s husband said the government probably sent the rain to let the lane people know they meant business.
“If they sent it, it wouldn’t be a soft rain such as this, but a soaking with thunder and lighting,” Lil answered.
Dermot took up his fiddle again and began to play as his next door neighbor held an umbrella over his instrument. Not being able to resist, people got up from the table and danced around the large O shape, laughing as they held each other’s wet hands and wet clothing. Eoin O’Toole asked Kate to dance, and she was pleasantly surprised to discover how exceptionally well he moved.
A meal that began at noon continued to four o’clock, when cake and more tea was served before each family gathered their belongings and headed toward their own cottage. As the party came to a close, the people praised the gathering and the women who put it together. As the women wrapped the remaining meat, vegetables, and dessert for the first families to leave to take to their new homes, the men carried the tables indoors, and then proceeded to sweep the entire lane. It was, indeed, a beautiful memory that would live on for all of them.
In the days, weeks and months ahead, people walked back and forth from their home helping each other pack belongings and sympathizing with those most distressed by relocation.
In the chaos and lamentations of moving, Eoin O’Toole could safely visit Kate without bringing attention to himself, or raising questions about why this recluse entered Kate’s home and hers alone.
“Will you go to live with your brother and his wife?” Kate asked.
“If at all possible, no. Not that they’re not good people. They’re the very best. But I feel like an embarrassment to them.”
“Aw, I know that feeling,” Kate replied, as she put the kettle on for tea.
“Where will you and the boy go?”
“I’m considering Dalkey. I saw a house there I’d like to put a down payment on from the money my Dad left me.”
“Why Dalkey?”
“I’ve taken Eoin many times to Dun Laoghaire. He loves to watch the sailboats which are a beautiful sight. But what I admired was the view from Dalkey station. One day while going to Dun Laoghaire, I decided to stay on the train until Dalkey came into view, promising Eoin we’d see his beloved sailboats and ferry boats leaving from and returning to Ireland after I looked around a bit. We climbed Dalkey Hill. From the top of the hill, I looked down. What a magnificent sight. As this luscious green hill descended, it met with the railroad station. On the other side of the station was the strand, beautiful golden sand, and beyond it the sea as far as the eyes could see. I fell in love with this place.”
“Would I be intruding in your life, if I took a room close by so that I will, on occasion, be able to see you and the boy?”
“It would be lovely to have you close by. Eoin and I are both very fond of you. But why take a room in a rooming house when you could come and live with us. The house I’m hoping to buy has three bedrooms. Eoin and I will each have a room, and you could use the other bedroom.”
“When Francis returns you may have another child, perhaps a daughter who would be in need of a room.”
“There’s a nice size garden in front, and there’s a quite large back yard in back of the house on which an extension could be built if extra rooms are needed.”
“You’ve really thought ahead.”
“A house is a big commitment. I want to make sure it fills our needs now and into the future, whatever that brings with it.”
“Francis made a great choice when he married you, and as much as I love him, I’m angry with him for leaving you and the child. I’d like to have him tracked down, and determine what his intentions are to you both.”
“No, Mr. O’Toole. Please do not track him down. It he comes back it must be of his own free will. I won’t have it any other way.”
“As you wish Kate, it shall be.”
Having made the tea, she left it to brew for a few moments.
“I’ve become very attached to this cottage, this community of kind people. I may have a grander place to live, but this community will always be a very special place to me.”
“And me,” O’Toole agreed.
“What does your brother think of all this?”
“I hate to say it, Kate, but he sides with the government and believes these cottages should have been torn down years ago. ‘Progress,’ in this instant, is merely a fancy word given to a lamentable deed.”
“We can’t expect people outside of this small community to understand what it has meant to us.”
“Well, I’m glad you are moving no further away from here than Dalkey.”
“Yes, so am I. It’s just a short train ride from here.”
“Which of our writers are associated with Dalkey?” O’Toole asked.
“Joyce, then an unknown, taught school there, but the Martello Tower in Sandycove, a few stations closer to the city than Dalkey, is what people think of in association with Joyce.”
“Yes, yet he spent but a week there.”
“Yes, but the time spent there has gone down in literary history in the opening pages of Ulysses.”
“You’re right there, Kate. That man showed all our faults but none of our good qualities. How could
he be so unkind to his own people?” he asked shaking his head.
“His own people weren’t very kind to him. Henrik Ibsen, who was considered quite radical in his day, influenced Joyce. Ibsen, in his writings, held a mirror up to the Norwegians that they might see their faults and consider changing the status quo.”
“Kate, that wasn’t a mirror Joyce held up to the Irish; it was a blooming magnifying glass.”
Kate laughed.
“How did the Norwegians react to Ibsen’s writings?”
“His plays didn’t have quite the same effect on them. Some did not like them, but the Norwegians apparently were more secure in who they were than the Irish at that time.”
“In what way?”
“Norway was a free country, a free people. Under England’s rule, the Irish were less than second-class citizens in their own country. They were looking for a savior, a deliverer, only to find their world-renowned citizen wrote not of their heroic past deeds or the injustice of that day, but rather blamed the victims for their own bondage.”
They sat in silence for a while, drinking their tea.
“Have some bread. I made it this morning, and it’s still warm.”
“Still warm is it? I remember my mother’s bread, hot from the oven with lots of creamery butter melting into it. How I loved the taste of Mother’s bread.”
“Help yourself while I pour us a second cup of tea.”
As the government relocated groups of lane people, they demolished their homes so that they could not, if dissatisfied with their new dwellings, return to their former homes. Some were persuaded by their kin to live with their married children.
Unfortunately, of all that were relocated, none were in walking distance of each other. The people were provided with ‘bed-sitters,’ which were one-room flats of bedroom and sitting room combined with a small alcove for cooking. They also included a bathroom. Of all the people resettled, only the brother and sister were satisfied with their new arrangement. Although they dreadfully missed the people of the lane and felt like strangers in their new neighborhood, their flat was similar to the others in footage. However, not being husband and wife, they were provided with a small bedroom and bedroom/sitting room. But what they liked most was being on the ground floor, which gave them a small patch of garden that came with the flat. They enjoyed planting and seeing the results of their labor. When the brother died, his sister was alone. Not well enough to make a trip to her closest neighbor from the lane, which would entail two buses in each direction, she rarely left the flat except for church on Sunday and to purchase the few groceries. Shortly thereafter, she began to lose track of time. The streets grew more unfamiliar to her, as did her own flat, until she forgot who she was, and thus became completely lost.
The Lane Page 14
