“I saved you something to eat,” she said. “It’s on the stove, if you want it.”
“Thank you.”
“Did you find all you were looking for?”
Though I was anything but sure, that I had found all I sought, I only told her, “I’ll never go there again.”
She seemed to sigh in relief. “Well,” she said, “now that that’s all squared away, I’ve something to tell you about your son.”
I realised that Joseph had not come to hug me, as he most always did when I arrived home.
“Oh, no,” I said. I wasn’t quite sure that I wanted to hear it, even as I asked: “What has he done this time?”
“When Mary-Anne said she wouldn’t play ball with him, he stuck a wad of chewing gum in her hair. I spent most of the afternoon trying to get it out.”
I groaned. “Is that why neither of them have graced us with their presence?”
“Well, I sent Joseph to bed; but Mary-Anne just refuses to come downstairs. I tried to pull the gum out of her hair – for almost two hours, mind you – but I ended up having to cut it out. Now she has a chunk of hair missing, and she won’t let anyone see her.”
“Didn’t you try to fix it?”
“I offered to, but she wouldn’t let me. Said she wanted you to do it. Apparently, you’re much better at it than I am.”
“Well, that is true.”
“Be it however it is, she’s still shut up in her room, and refuses to talk to anyone. Perhaps you can convince her to come and eat her supper – after you reprimand your son, of course.”
“Oh – come now, Thea! It’s not as though he put out her eye!”
She shook her head in disapproval. “Mary-Anne has been crying for three hours! You’re too soft on that boy, Katie. That’s why he’s always running amok, sticking things where they don’t belong.”
“Then maybe you should decide his punishments.”
“He won’t listen to me!”
“That’s probably because you’re so mean!”
Her mouth dropped open. “Why, I never –”
I kissed her cheek on the way to Joseph’s bedroom.
In all honesty, Joseph did not have a room of his own. He simply had a little bed pushed up into a corner of the parlour, where there were all sorts of things (mostly toys) strewn across the floor. He moved out of mine and Thea’s room when he was big enough for his own bed; and the parlour had been the only place to put him. When Kerry had moved to the room downstairs with Myrne, Mary-Anne had kept the one upstairs for herself; and neither she nor Joseph were receptive to the idea of sharing it.
Since the parlour was dark, I assumed that Joseph was already asleep. I had already turned around, and started to make my way quietly from the room, when I heard his voice say sleepily, “Is that you, Ma?”
“It’s me,” said I. “Go back to sleep.”
“Can I have a kiss goodnight?”
I went over to his bed, and knelt down beside it. “Give me your cheek,” I said; quite the same as I said, every other night.
He presented his cheek to me eagerly. I kissed it softly, and he laid his head back down. “Thanks, Ma.”
“You don’t have to thank me for kisses.”
“I know.” Then he paused, and said (without my having to ask him a single question): “I’m sorry about Mary-Anne’s hair. I didn’t mean to do it.”
“Oh, my!” I said. “You must have just missed her mouth, then.”
He giggled, but I quickly silenced him. “Shush, now,” I said. “If Thea hears you, she’ll think we’re having fun in here.”
“It’s not okay to have fun?”
“Not after you put chewing gum in your cousin’s hair.”
“Oh. I see.”
“I hope so, because if you do it again, I’m going to put gum in your hair.”
He laughed. “I hardly have no hair, Ma.”
“Hardly have any.”
“I hardly have any hair, Ma.”
“That’s better.” I ruffled the brown feathers atop his head.
I knew that I shouldn’t have encouraged his bad behaviour; but I simply couldn’t help it! Nothing made me happier than to spoil that boy. Thea was angry, when he broke things; Myrne became frazzled, when Joseph put on his good shirts and went out to play in the mud.
In either case, I always seemed to fail to discipline him.
“He’s just a little boy,” I would tell Thea. “He doesn’t mean to break anything.”
“Can’t he play outside, like every other child?” she would ask. “That’s what he would do, if that was what you told him to do.”
“He only wants to be like you,” I would tell Myrne, scrubbing in futility at the stains on his white shirts.
“Can’t he be like me in his own clothes?” Myrne would ask. “He wouldn’t take mine, if you told him not to.”
They were both probably right. Joseph was a precocious, rowdy child – and he listened to no one but me. Thea, Myrne or Kerry could tell him to do the same thing five times over the course of a single hour; but he would not even begin to think about doing it, until I told him to. Which was not to say, that he did not love them all very much; because he did.
He just loved me more.
When I thought he was sleeping, and rose from his bed to leave the room, I heard him speak once again.
“Ma,” said he; and I could hear from the thickness of his voice that he was just on the brink of dreams; “will you sit outside with me tomorrow, under the silver-tree?”
“Of course I will. But sleep now, my love.”
“Yes, Ma,” he whispered, squeezing his eyes shut tight.
If there was anyone who loved that tree more than I, it was that darling boy of mine. In all those years, he was the only one who ever sat beneath it so long as I; and the only one, save for me, who was ever subject to those sudden urges to run outside, and to assure himself that its beauty was quite as great as before.
***
“I remember this chair,” said Thea. “I sat in it all night once.”
“You’ve been to Wimple Street?” Myrne asked.
“A few times – a long time ago.”
“A long time ago,” I said quietly, rocking back and forth in the chair. I had made a space for it in the parlour, and had been sitting in it for over an hour; for it was the strangest thing. Though I knew that I was in my own home (to be specific, 100 Lennox Lane), sitting in that chair made me feel as if I were back in my little room on Wimple Street. The walls of the parlour seemed to fall away, and I could see those water spots once again – on the ceiling, under the window. I saw the holes in the wall behind the door, where my father had slammed it so many times. I saw my bed, made forever crooked by his attempt to silence its squeaking. I sat in that chair, and I saw him appear in the doorway; his hair was mussed, and he smelled of ale. He looked at me without speaking. (And that, of course, is how I knew it wasn’t real. There was never a single instance, when he could think of absolutely nothing to complain about.)
I heard Myrne’s voice; felt him pinch me on the arm. I came slowly from my musings, and looked up at him.
“Aren’t you coming for supper?” he asked. “Thea called you twice.”
“You didn’t have to pinch me.”
“I didn’t have to. I just wanted to.”
“Oh, go away.”
He went off into the kitchen, then – and I looked down at the arms of the chair, resting so still beneath my hands, so still that I could almost feel the years being poured into them. I rubbed my hands along the arms, curling my fingers beneath their wide ends. I closed my eyes and felt back, back before my old home had been full of strangers; back before I had lived there practically by myself, plagued by constant pain and loneliness. I felt back before I had known what it meant to be afraid. I reached back, and I felt warm arms around me; I felt what it was to be so small, so completely vulnerable; but also unquestionably safe. I felt what it was not to have to think about anything,
not to have to worry about the repercussions of my actions; I felt what it was to have someone else worry for me, to do for me.
Even as I remembered, I knew that my body remained on Lennox Lane; even as I felt myself drifting away, I knew that I still lingered. And that was how I felt those same arms around me, strong but graceful – and it was impossible to fall, while I was held there. I had not moved; I had not gone from my place; but someone else had come there with me, reminding me that she was not so distant as I had always thought her to be.
“Ma!”
I shook myself, and opened my eyes.
“What is it, baby?”
“Come eat with me.”
“I’m coming, Joseph.”
He came into the room, looking at the rocking chair. “That was your ma’s, wasn’t it, Ma?”
“It was.”
“Was she as pretty as you?”
“Prettier.”
He laughed. “Nah. She couldn’t have been.”
“Do you want me to show you a picture of her?”
He nodded emphatically.
“Come on,” I said. “It’s in my room.”
He followed me into my bedroom, where I went straight to the closet. At the bottom was a small chest, in which I kept all of the things I had first taken with me from Wimple Street.
I reached down to lift the lid of the chest, and took my journal from the top. I opened it and took out the picture of my family – a bit worn and wrinkled, now, from years of being handled.
“Come sit with me,” I said, taking Joseph’s hand. We sat down on the bed, leaning back against the headboard, his head resting in the crook of my arm.
“Is that you, when you were little?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Is that my grandda?”
“It is.”
He looked up at me. “Are you sad that he’s dead?”
“Sometimes, Joseph.”
“As sad as about your ma?”
“I don’t think so.”
If there was one thing I never did with Joseph, it was lie. I always hoped that, if I never lied to him, he would never lie to me; a practice which bore successful fruits, in those years that came after.
He turned his eyes back to the picture, and said, “That’s your ma.”
“Is that a question – or do you already know?”
“I know. She looks the same as you.”
“Not exactly the same.”
“Uh-huh,” he insisted, rising to his knees and bouncing up and down, the way children always seem to do when they are trying to prove a point. He reached out and touched my cheek. “You got the same face.”
“Have the same.”
“You have the same face.”
“Good boy.”
“But you do, Ma, really,” he said, pointing to my mother.
I looked down and saw her face, so fair and beautiful – perfect in every way. Then I looked at Joseph. I saw her there, with a bit of mud smeared on the cheek; a little gravy from a half-eaten dinner on the chin. But the eyes were unblemished. They stared out at me, as real as the air I breathed, reminding me that they had once lived in another face, before they lived in his; and before they lived in mine.
“You have her face, too,” I said, pulling him back into my arms to squeeze him tight. “Your hair’s just a little shorter.”
He laughed. “That’s ‘cause I’m a boy.”
“You certainly are,” I said. “You’re a beautiful, perfect little boy – who is also very messy. Come – it’s time for your bath.”
He pulled a face. “Do I have to?”
“Yes, you do.”
“Can I take one tomorrow?”
I kissed the top of his head. “Of course you can. Right after dinner, just like always. It will be just as much fun as the one you take tonight!”
He slid down off the bed, and ran to the door. “You have to catch me first.”
“I’ll catch you in the bathroom. If you’re not there by the time I am, you’re going to be in trouble.”
He ran out into the hall – and I heard him collide with someone. “Oof!” said the victim of the collision.
“Sorry, Uncle Myrne!” Joseph said, his little feet taking up their noisy course again down the hall.
I went back to the closet, to replace the photograph inside my journal. As I moved the book, I saw the small stack of letters marked in Abbaline Elson’s firm and careful hand. From time to time, I received a few words from her – but she was seldom in one place long enough for me to write to her.
She had gone to England (most ironically enough), the year before, to plan a campaign for one thing or another with an old friend. I swear, that woman was always advocating for something. If she won at something, she would simply go on to the next item on her list, fighting with quite as much fervour as she had done just before. But, as I have already said – she was always destined for very great things.
Before she set sail for England, she stopped in to see me; for she said that she felt a great tide rushing beneath her, and that it might very well be carrying her away forever.
We talked of old times with no trace of sadness whatever; and only laughed as we recounted those grisly and terrible things, which one never expects to cease aching over. But you do; and we did.
In only this one thing, I will skip a little ahead; for then I will not have to come back to the subject, when it would have been so much easier just to put it down now, and spare me the additional pain. Even after Abbaline left Ireland, she kept up a correspondence with me, and shared with me (much to my delight) almost all of her endeavours and adventures.
But I never did see her again.
At the end of 1936, I received a letter from Abraham Piccadilly, a close friend and associate of Abbaline’s. Abbaline had died, he said, at a demonstration gone out of hand, by a blade to the heart wielded by a member of the opposition. I had no idea what she had been rallying for; and I had no idea why she had died. So it was with a heavy sinking in my soul that I stowed that last letter away, to lie forever among its mates of a different hand.
Sometimes I would think back, and remember my obliviousness concerning Abbaline’s comings and goings at Shealittle Road, and hence my unawareness concerning her person as a whole; but then I would think of those times when I knew exactly who she was, and the details became less and less important. For Abbaline Elson was not a person of details, but rather, a person of action and consequence – and those were two things which I learnt better from her, than from anyone else I have ever known.
And it was because of her, too, that I felt so much more pride than I would have, when all those great events occurred, that made me think of her – and how some may not have even come to be, if it had not been for her. I read her letters, alongside the declarations in the newspapers, with a dignity that had been bestowed upon me during those difficult years of my life. In 1919, all those broken backs, and fingers worked down to the bone, resulted in the formation of the Irish Republic. So much blood, sweat and tears – and suddenly it was real!
Of course, things so long looked-for hardly ever come so easily. The Republic was not recognised at the first, and a two-year battle ensued, called the War of Independence. But then came the truce in 1921; then came the Anglo-Irish Treaty; and finally, the Irish Free State. Those counties in Northern Ireland remained the property of England – but all else, including my own home in Kilkenny, cast off its iron shackles, and embraced the emancipation it had thought would never come.
Now, of course, it is all well and easy to recount such things. But at the time, one felt surrounded by turmoil and failure, and could hardly expect for things to ever get much better than they were at present. Yet times change; and all of those things that I can look back on now, and smile about as I read those old notes from Abbaline, seem to have just slipped into place – as do all things which are meant to be.
Chapter 50
The years passed like the turning of a page. They rushed p
ast me like the scattered leaves of autumn, and I watched them go, admiring their beauty – but undeniably saddened by the knowledge that they would never return.
Aunt Aggie died at the age of three-and-seventy. Whenever I thought about her, I smiled tearfully at the thought that I had spent her very last day with her.
Aggie being who she was, however, I had not even the slightest suspicion, as I departed from her house, that I would never see her again. I went out into the street with a basket of muffins on my arm (my very favourite blueberry ones, to which none other could compare), and she leant out just as precariously as always, clutching at the jamb with one hand while she waved me off with the other.
“Do enjoy those muffins!” she cried after me. “And don’t forget to share, my greedy little Katharine.”
“I shall do my best, Auntie!”
Another smile, another wave – and then she was no more to me. I certainly could not make a home for all of her many possessions; but I refused to allow her white elephants into the hands of anyone else; and so set them up all around the house, as constant reminders of that dear woman, who had once been quite the only person in the world who loved me.
Mary-Anne was the first to reach adulthood, and I was unsurprised to find – one day during her twentieth year – that she was engaged to a hatter named Gilbert Bean.
“He’s a handsome boy,” I said to her. “But Bean? Do you really want that to be your name, forever and ever?”
“I’d rather it wasn’t,” she said with a frown. “But what can I do? I love the poor fool.”
I watched Joseph grow into a man, right alongside Myrne’s own son (who was named Jeremiah). I held onto him as tightly as I could, but my efforts proved fruitless (as I of course had known that they would). He eventually met a girl named Susan White, who eventually became Susan O’Brien – and who eventually bore a son named Michael O’Brien.
“Can you believe it, Ma?” Joseph asked me, the very first time he held Michael in his arms. “A son of my very own.”
I laughed. “They’re more trouble than they’re worth.”
An Irish Heart Page 49
