The Last Storyteller

  The meeting rattled along with a brisk and enjoyable air. I found your openness disconcerting at first—no hanging back with you. Louise, it was you, I think, who went straight in and asked, “Have you kidnapped Mom?” And you, Ben, followed up with “Jack is like a raging beast.” And you both essentially implied the main questions: “What’s happening?” and “What’s going to happen next?”

  I felt a strong sense that the two of you had somehow taken over your mother’s life a long time earlier, and that you had a vision of her, and an understanding of her needs and difficulties. All of that now became clear.

  Whatever your loyalties—and how strong they were, and how gracious—it became ever clearer that her life had not been easy. As our general bewilderment with one another settled down, a picture of Jack emerged: a quick-tempered cliché of a man, prone to swift violence and then binge drinking. Followed by more violence. It still mystifies me that he took no violence out on the pair of you—yet did, repeatedly and perennially, on your darling mother.

  Was that the reason for her almost catatonic state with me? Did she equate me with him and his viciousness? Or was she so unforgiving of my failure to rescue her that she couldn’t speak to me? I never found out.

  We began making tentative plans. Both of you seemed certain that a continuing life with Jack Stirling had moved beyond the limits of Venetia’s safety. Your mother shook her head—but said nothing.

  All three of us agreed that for the moment Venetia should not go near him. Again she shook her head. And again said nothing. I put forward my ideas: that I would soon have a permanent place to live; that for the present she could travel with me. Marian, naturally, offered us her house anytime we needed it, and I said, “And there’s Miss Fay’s, where I usually stay when I’m in Dublin.”

  To all this Venetia neither shook her head nor said anything.

  When she did at last speak, she said, “I have to see him, though. No matter what happens.”

  Ben, you were the one who said, “Not right now, Mom,” and Louise, you elaborated: “He’s going a little crazy. Drinking and shouting, you know—the usual. And wild fits of weeping.”

  I remain fascinated by the way your sentences often end in an inflection, like a query.

  Louise, you said, “I’ll smuggle some clothes to you.”

  Marian chimed in: “We should at least have some idea of the next steps.”

  Which is when, Louise, you said, “My next step is leaving now—I’m standing in for you, Mom, in the show.”

  My stomach turned a little.

  83

  Dr. Brady spent longer this time with Venetia. Again she looked as though she had been crying. As we were leaving, he called me over and spoke in that quick and vital way by which so much crucial information gets transferred—in a few seconds, in a whisper:

  “She’s not being dramatic when she says she’s afraid for her life.”

  We drove back to Grove Road. I stopped to buy some newspapers and some milk. When I climbed back into the car, I found Venetia trembling and hunched. She kept looking behind her.

  I knew little about nervous states or emotional crises. In Ireland we didn’t allow the existence of such things; prayer solved all. I didn’t need special knowledge to see the grip of this paroxysm—she almost had to be carried from the car. Inside the house, however, she calmed. And addressed a question to me for the first time:

  “What did you think of the children?”

  “Wonderful. I loved them.”

  “So you should.”

  “How could I not, Venetia?”

  “They’ve been on this earth since 1933, Ben.”

  Her words lashed me. All her power as an actress came across. She played bitterness. Deep and true. And she didn’t look at me. Indeed, she had scarcely made eye contact in the four days we had been together.

  Once again she went to bed. I sat downstairs. And found new discomfort. The newspapers carried a report that an IRA apartment had been raided. A stash of documents had been found—“a revealing cache,” said the report. It listed the names of “hundreds of activists and a large number of sympathizers, including doctors, lawyers, priests, and civil servants.”

  Then came a stinging line: “One employee of a government department, whose job takes him around the country, is believed to carry guns for active service units. A police source would not confirm, however, whether the information that led them to the cache of papers and weaponry in Dublin’s Baggot Street came from this public servant.”

  No sleep that night. With Venetia in the same bed but as far away as an island, I had a new kind of “alone” in my life.

  84

  Miss Fay spoke the words I needed to hear: “Get out of Dublin.” Followed by “Has she been silent since you found her?” Followed by “Silent and cold when you need communication and warmth? Sounds just like our own beloved country.” She concluded with “Ben, dear, none of this is good.”

  I watched their meeting with great attention. Dora Fay now had a telephone, and I called from Marian Killeen’s house to ask for a good visiting time. She invited us for an evening meal—which she always called “supper.” How many legends tell of two women who love the same man not liking each other? I have to say, they looked mutually wary.

  In her grave and gracious way, Miss Fay said, “I feel I know you, Ben has told us so much about you.”

  Still using “us”—as she would for years; in her soul, James never died. She took Venetia’s hands and said, “We’ve longed to see you in this house. For years and years you’ve been a great topic of our conversation.”

  I could see both of their faces clearly. Miss Fay, wearing not black but purple (“the color of emperors for James,” she told me later), struggled with warmth. Later she confided that somehow, and foolishly, she had been expecting a lissome young woman.

  Venetia registered shock.

  “A great topic?” she asked.

  What’s surprising her? Doesn’t she know that I’ve thought of nothing and nobody since the day we parted? But we’d never even said “goodbye,” never had the chance.

  I had been at Goldenfields. We had won a resounding victory. My parents were coming back to the farm they thought they’d lost. Swindled from them by Venetia’s filthy old grandfather, King Kelly.

  That drive from Goldenfields—I recall it so well. On a night when the moon was clear-faced and innocent. I remember thinking, My friend the moon. And tomorrow my friend the kind old sun.

  What did I find in the street outside our house? Venetia’s great prop, the ventriloquy doll Blarney, who topped her bill in the road show, had been decapitated by the kidnappers, and I accidentally kicked his head as I walked to the front door. Venetia knew none of this, knew none of my aftermath—so much to tell her.

  Miss Fay began the process that night, filling in for Venetia the blanks of my life. We heard a great deal about James, and how I now wore James’s coat.

  “Literally and metaphorically,” said Miss Fay. “James was a major man,” she said. “So is Ben. But how could you know that, my dear? And I can see so clearly the beauty of which Ben spoke. When you met most recently in America, Ben came home saying that if Venetia returned to Ireland, people would think she was Grace Kelly—didn’t you, Ben? And all of Ireland loves Grace Kelly.”

  Venetia smiled, actually gave a little giggle.

  Had we found a way through? I wondered, I hoped so—although I knew, actress or not, that she wasn’t vain. Not with the mother she’d had, your other grandmother, who used to introduce herself with the words “I’m Sarah Kelly, the great actress.”

  85

  The evening went not badly—I’ll put it no higher than that. Venetia thawed, in part because of May, who kept looking at her and then saying, “Oh, missus, I shouldn’t be gawking at you, but I can’t take my eyes off you.”

  May, however, also overheard our conversation about the show.

  “Gentleman Jack and His Friend. Oh, I know you now, m
iss, you’re the friend. Wasn’t I there last week, my pal Nancy, she had the head hippomatized off of her, and she playing a fiddle, her that hasn’t a note to throw to a dog.”

  I felt my gut tighten. Telephone, telegraph, tell May—that was Dublin, where, as in any small city, information, gossip, and talk constituted powerful currency.

  Before we left, Venetia excused herself to the bathroom, and Miss Fay grabbed the moment.

  “Ben! What is the matter with her?”

  “I’m baffled. She doesn’t say a word to me; there’s no connection.”

  Miss Fay put a hand on my cheek. “Oh, Ben. I’m so sorry. So different from what you expected.”

  “But the children are terrific,” I said.

  “Why wouldn’t they be?” I looked at her, puzzled by her now. “Well, they’re your children too, my dear. What’s bred in the bone comes out in the blood.” As we heard Venetia approach, she muttered, “Go and start the car; give me a few minutes alone with her.”

  When Venetia emerged, huddled again, and hunched against the world, I opened the door, installed her in her seat, and went back to thank Miss Fay.

  “Get out of Dublin,” she repeated. “As soon as you can. Change her scene. Get her away. Out on the road that you both used to love. Oh, by the way, a friend of yours called—he’s ready to leave hospital.”

  “Any idea what ails her?” I asked.

  “Impossible to tell.” She paused. “Ben, it is twenty-five years; people change. But she is frightened.”

  As would Miss Fay herself soon be; Gentleman Jack Stirling showed up at her house and beat her senseless with his fists.

  86

  Some brief notes: Marian took Venetia shopping the next day. She reported some liveliness, but a desire in Venetia to be furtive and quick. “She asked more than once if anyone was following us,” Marian said. Venetia showed some animation during actual purchases. “But,” Marian noted, “not perhaps enough.”

  You, my lovely twins, came around late that night and said that Jack hadn’t subsided. I told you of our plan to drive to Limerick the next morning, if your mother felt fearful. I knew every hotel and boardinghouse in the country and would choose the best. I telephoned the hospital to tell Jimmy Bermingham that I’d collect him.

  We had one of those days when spring peeps in at us, weeks ahead of time. Venetia reacted to it with smiles—how could she not? The early daffodils, the primroses on the grassy verges, the buds, the lambs, all the lovely clichés came to meet us.

  Never have I observed a human being so closely. I managed to angle the rearview mirror so I could see most of the road and much of her face. In those days the journey took between three and four hours; twenty miles out of Dublin, Venetia finally sat back and released her shoulders into the seat.

  Though now lacking sleep over several nights, I had massive energy. In my insomniac mind I’d planned every mile of this road. As a man trying to recapture a wonderful past, I had much to help me.

  Venetia had loved the road. In this dwelt an irony, because she’d been forced to build the road show when her famed but jealous mother elbowed Venetia out of a star place in the Abbey Theatre. Sarah had once triumphed in all the roles that went on to showcase Venetia, and people with long memories—meaning, in Ireland, everybody—never felt shy of saying that the daughter was outshining the mother.

  Once Venetia had taken to the road, though—with as rag, tag, and bobtail a company as was ever assembled—she loved it. And every town and village held some kind of likable memory for her. Indeed, in the weeks before she was kidnapped, we’d been planning a new kind of company, an upgraded, less rackety show.

  “More Shakespeare than shaky,” she called it. She had a passion to introduce the best of classical theater to the worst venues. Meaning she wanted to play the places least likely ever to see such drama. We couldn’t afford to visit town and city theaters, and Venetia believed that Shakespeare’s groundlings were alive and well in the Irish provinces.

  In the car on that glorious sunny day, the Venetia I had known began to return. We drove through the village of Rathcoole.

  “Remember?” I said to her.

  “Wasn’t this the place where Peter came onstage blind drunk? And forgot he was supposed to be in character?”

  She began to laugh.

  “And he made a speech.” I could see it clear as day. “He said that the Irish loved Shakespeare because Shakespeare was a Catholic.”

  “Not just a Catholic,” Venetia said, and did a perfect impersonation of Peter slurring his words: “A secret Catholic.”

  It happened so fast. Children, I’m sure you must have seen those short pieces of film where they speed up a flower unfolding. That’s how I remember that morning: your mother came racing out of that tight bud, that emotional bandage. And soon, sitting beside me, I found the sweet, dancing girl I had missed for so long.

  I wrote in my journal that night:

  A memory—from today; every time I read this entry I will savor it. We reached Kildare sometime before noon. Not a cloud in the sky. Venetia looked all around her, in every direction, like a child.

  Venetia asked, “Is this the town where you told me a legend about a saint?”

  I repeated it: Brigid, a holy woman, wanted to found a convent; she asked a rich pagan man for some of his land. He scoffed, told her that she could have as much land as her cloak would cover. Brigid lowered the heavy cloak from her shoulders, laid it on the ground, “and it spread and it spread and it spread, for acres and acres and acres.”

  Back then, Venetia had clapped her hands in delight.

  “That’s a perfect image for loving,” she’d exclaimed. “It just spreads and spreads and spreads.” Today she said, “Lovely metaphor.” She didn’t say for what. But this was the old Venetia. Who came forth even more. As we passed an old ruin, she asked, “Weren’t our lives filled with castles,

  Ben?”

  87

  We halted for lunch in Mountrath. Venetia took my arm as we crossed the street. In the absence of a worthwhile hotel, I chose a bed-and-breakfast that also served meals, run by a Mrs. Dennehy, who had the gift of tact.

  We ate well, the standard Irish lunch of meat and potatoes, followed by a deep apple tart. Farmers came here, and commercial travelers, and one or two schoolchildren. As we finished, something pleasing happened.

  A woman in her forties, dressed like a farmwife who was spending the day in town, had been trying not to stare at us. She had a daughter with her, aged twelve or so, in a school uniform. The mother, with a huge mop of hair, came by our table and, shy as a panda, said to Venetia, “Excuse me, but didn’t I see you in plays, in a show, here in Mountrath a long time ago?”

  Venetia looked at me and looked at the woman. “You might have.”

  The woman said, “Oh, you were marvelous. I hope you’ll come round again—I never forgot you, you were so lovely and clear. We were doing that old Shakespeare in school, and I never understood a word of it until I heard you say it.” And then, in the manner of all shy people who have suddenly spoken in a burst, she ran off. The daughter, not at all as withdrawn, said, “Will you be doing it again here soon? ’Cause we’ll all buy tickets.” Then she thrust forth a school jotter she’d hauled from her satchel and asked, “Can I have your autograph, please?”

  Venetia smiled and signed, “Best wishes, Venetia Kelly.” And she did it in long, clearly legible letters, not her usual scrawl; the old kindnesses hadn’t deserted her.

  88

  Jimmy Bermingham could not have been coarser.

  “Shite’s sake, Ben, is this her? I was expecting a young one.”

  Venetia looked at him, her face shrieking disgust. He was waiting in the hallway of the hospital, wearing a mauve shirt, nylon and cheap, and a tie with red clocks on it: What was Jimmy’s obsession with clocks? Did he use them to make bombs? I should have asked him.

  Trying to get over his gaffe, he said to Venetia, “This man here, he saved my life, my a
ctual life, and nearly got himself drowned doing it—isn’t that right, Ben?”

  “How are you feeling?” I asked.

  “I had pneumonia,” he said. “On the double. And I got pleurisy. And every shaggin’ disease from here to Timbuktu. I had the shakes for three weeks, and I have enough penicillin in me to feed a greyhound.” Jimmy’s similes and metaphors didn’t always mesh. He turned his attention to Venetia. “D’you know what, girl? This fella here, he’s only mad about you; he talks about you as if the sun was shining out of your you-know-where.” The trouble with this remark was its ambiguity.

  I said, “Jimmy, where are we going?”

  After he’d directed me, he sat in the back of the car and talked nonstop. From time to time he leaned forward and asked Venetia a question. She never answered. She had disappeared again; I could have throttled Jimmy in his cheap brown striped suit, with his nonstop chatter.

  Near Birdhill, we turned left and the Shannon hove into view beneath us. Jimmy fell silent, looking at the river that had come close to taking his life. And mine. Eventually he said, “Christ Almighty.”

  I said, “Is that a prayer or a swear?”

  He patted me on the shoulder. “Ben, you’re some man, d’you know that?”

  Venetia might not have been in the car.

  He directed me to a cottage and told me, “We’ll say goodbye here.”

  Venetia neither spoke nor looked at him as he wished her well. Standing in the road beside me, he said, “Well, Ben, your life is fixed and mine isn’t.”

  “Yours can be fixed,” I said.

  “How so?”

  “Go and stay in Randall’s house.” I meant it well; I meant it for him—but my vile ulterior motive must have been lurking somewhere.