Brooklyn

  Once the event in the golf club was over, she decided, she would pick a date. For some time now, she had postponed writing to Father Flood, or Miss Fortini, or Mrs. Kehoe, explaining her extended absence. She would write, she determined, over the next few days. She would try not to postpone any further what she had to do. But the prospect of telling her mother the date of her departure and the prospect of saying goodbye to Jim Farrell still filled her with fear, enough for her once more to put both ideas out of her mind. She would think about them soon, she thought, but not now.

  On the day before the event at the golf club she had gone alone in the early afternoon to the graveyard to visit Rose’s grave again. It had been drizzling and she carried an umbrella. Once she arrived in the graveyard, she noticed that the wind was almost cold, even though it was early July. In this grey, blustery light the graveyard where Rose lay seemed a bare and forlorn place, no trees, nothing much growing, just rows of headstones and paths and underneath all the silence of the dead. Eilis saw names on headstones that she recognized, the parents or grandparents of her friends from school, men and women whom she remembered well, all gone now, held here on the edge of the town. For the moment, most of them were remembered by the living, but it was a memory slowly fading as each season passed.

  She stood at Rose’s grave and tried to pray or whisper something. She felt sad, she thought, and maybe that was enough—to come here and let Rose’s spirit know how much she was missed. But she could not cry or say anything. She stood at the grave for as long as she could and then walked away, feeling the sharpest grief as she was actually leaving the graveyard itself and walking towards Summerhill and the Presentation Convent.

  When she reached the corner of Main Street, she decided that she would walk through the town rather than go along the Back Road. Seeing faces, people moving, shops doing business, she thought, might cure her of the gnawing sadness, almost guilt, that she felt about Rose, about not being able to speak properly to her or pray for her.

  She passed the cathedral on the opposite side and was making her way towards the Market Square when she heard someone calling her name. When she looked, she saw that Mary, who worked for Miss Kelly, was shouting at her and beckoning to her to cross the road.

  “Is there something wrong?” Eilis asked.

  “Miss Kelly wants to see you,” Mary said. She was almost out of breath and looked frightened. “She says I’m to make sure and bring you back with me now.”

  “Now?” Eilis asked, laughing.

  “Now,” Mary repeated.

  Miss Kelly was waiting at the door.

  “Mary,” she said, “we are going upstairs for a minute and if anyone is looking for me, then tell them I’ll be down in my own good time.”

  “Yes, miss.”

  Miss Kelly opened the entrance to the part of the building where she lived and ushered Eilis in. As Eilis closed the door behind her, Miss Kelly led her up a dark stairway to the living room, which looked onto the street but seemed almost as dark as the stairwell and had, Eilis thought, too much furniture in it. Miss Kelly pointed to a chair covered in newspapers.

  “Put those on the floor and sit down,” she said.

  Miss Kelly sat opposite her on a faded-looking leather armchair.

  “So how are you getting on?” she asked.

  “Very well, thanks, Miss Kelly.”

  “So I hear. And I was just thinking about you yesterday and wondering if I would ever see you because I heard from Madge Kehoe in America just yesterday.”

  “Madge Kehoe?” Eilis asked.

  “She’d be Mrs. Kehoe to you but she’s a cousin of mine. She was, before she married, a Considine, and my mother, God rest her, was a Considine, and so we are first cousins.”

  “She never mentioned that,” Eilis said.

  “Oh, the Considines were always very close,” Miss Kelly said. “My mother was the same.”

  Miss Kelly’s tone was almost skittish; it was, Eilis thought, as though she were doing an imitation of herself. Eilis asked herself if it could possibly be true that Miss Kelly was a cousin of Mrs. Kehoe.

  “Is that right?” Eilis asked coldly.

  “And of course she told me all about you when you arrived first. But then there was no news here and Madge has a policy that she only keeps in touch with you if you keep in touch with her. So what I do is I telephone her about twice a year. I never stay long on the line because of the cost. But it keeps her happy, especially if there is news. And then when you came home, well, that was news and I heard you were never out of Curracloe, and in Courtown with your finery, and then a little bird who happens to be a customer of mine told me that he took a photograph of you all in Cush Gap. He said you made a lovely group.”

  Miss Kelly seemed to be enjoying herself; Eilis could think of no way of stopping her.

  “And so I telephoned Madge with all the news, and about you paying out the wages down in Davis’s.”

  “Did you, Miss Kelly?”

  It was clear to Eilis that Miss Kelly had prepared every word of what she was saying. The idea that the man who had taken the photograph in Cush, a figure Eilis barely remembered and had never seen before, had been in Miss Kelly’s shop talking about her and that this news was conveyed to Mrs. Kehoe in Brooklyn suddenly made her afraid.

  “And once she had news of her own, then she telephoned back,” Miss Kelly said. “So, now.”

  “And what did she say, Miss Kelly?”

  “Oh, I think you know what she said.”

  “Was it interesting?”

  In her tone, Eilis tried to equal Miss Kelly’s air of disdain.

  “Oh, don’t try and fool me!” Miss Kelly said. “You can fool most people, but you can’t fool me.”

  “I am sure I would not like to fool anyone,” Eilis said.

  “Is that right, Miss Lacey? If that’s what your name is now.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She told me the whole thing. The world, as the man says, is a very small place.”

  Eilis knew from the gloating expression on Miss Kelly’s face that she herself had not been able to disguise her alarm. A shiver went through her as she wondered if Tony had come to see Mrs. Kehoe and told her of their wedding. Instantly, she thought this unlikely. More likely, she reasoned, was that someone in the queue that day in City Hall had recognized her or Tony, or seen their names, and passed the news on to Mrs. Kehoe or one of her cronies.

  She stood up. “Is that all you have to say, Miss Kelly?”

  “It is, but I’ll be phoning Madge again and I’ll tell her I met you. How is your mother?”

  “She’s very well, Miss Kelly.”

  Eilis was shaking.

  “I saw you after that Byrne one’s wedding getting into the car with Jim Farrell. Your mother looked well. I hadn’t seen her for a while but I thought she looked well.”

  “She’ll be glad to hear that,” Eilis said.

  “Oh, now, I’m sure,” Miss Kelly replied.

  “So is that all, Miss Kelly?”

  “It is,” Miss Kelly said and smiled grimly at her as she stood up. “Except don’t forget your umbrella.”

  On the street, Eilis searched in her handbag and found she had the letter from the shipping company with the number to call to reserve a place on the liner. In the Market Square she stopped at Godfrey’s and bought some notepaper and envelopes. She walked along Castle Street and down Castle Hill to the post office. At the desk, she gave them the number she wished to phone and they told her to wait in the kiosk in the corner of the office. When the phone rang, she lifted the receiver and gave her name and details to the shipping company clerk, who found her file and told her that the earliest possible sailing from Cobh to New York was Friday, the day after tomorrow, and he could, if that suited her, reserve a place for her in third class at no extra charge. Once she agreed, he gave her the time of the sailing and the planned date of arrival and she hung up.

  Having paid for the phone call, she asked
for airmail envelopes. When the clerk found some, she asked for four and went to the small writing booth near the window and wrote four letters. To Father Flood, Mrs. Kehoe and Miss Fortini she simply apologized for her late departure and told them when she would be arriving. To Tony, she said that she loved him and missed him and would be with him, she hoped, by the end of the following week. She gave him the name of the liner and the details she had about the possible time of arrival. She signed her name. And then, having closed the other three envelopes, she read over what she had written to Tony and thought to tear it up and ask for another but decided instead to seal it and hand it in at the desk with the rest.

  On the way up Friary Hill she discovered that she had left her umbrella in the post office but did not go back to collect it.

  Her mother was in the kitchen, washing up. She turned as Eilis came in.

  “I thought after you had left that I should have gone with you. It’s a lonely old place, out there.”

  “The graveyard?” Eilis asked as she sat down at the kitchen table.

  “Isn’t that where you were?”

  “It is, Mammy.”

  She thought she was going to be able to speak now, but she found that she could not; the words would not come, just a few heavy heaves of breath. Her mother turned around again and looked at her. “Are you all right? Are you upset?”

  “Mammy, there’s something I should have told you when I came back first but I have to tell you now. I got married in Brooklyn before I came home. I am married. I should have told you the minute I got back.”

  Her mother reached for a towel and began to wipe her hands. Then she folded the towel carefully and deliberately and moved slowly towards the table.

  “Is he American?”

  “He is, Mammy. He’s from Brooklyn.”

  Her mother sighed and put her hand out, holding the table as though she needed support. She nodded her head slowly.

  “Eily, if you are married, you should be with your husband.”

  “I know.”

  Eilis started to cry and put her head down on her arms. As she looked up after a while, still sobbing, she found that her mother had not moved.

  “Is he nice, Eily?”

  She nodded. “He is,” she said.

  “If you married him, he’d have to be nice, that’s what I think,” she said.

  Her mother’s voice was soft and low and reassuring, but Eilis could see from the look in her eyes how much effort she was putting into saying as little as possible of what she felt.

  “I have to go back,” Eilis said. “I have to go in the morning.”

  “And you kept this from me all the time?” her mother said.

  “I am sorry, Mammy.”

  She began to cry again.

  “You didn’t have to marry him? You weren’t in trouble?” her mother asked.

  “No.”

  “And tell me something: if you hadn’t married him, would you still be going back?”

  “I don’t know,” Eilis said.

  “But you are getting the train in the morning?” her mother said.

  “I am, the train to Rosslare and then to Cork.”

  “I’ll go down and get Joe Dempsey to collect you in the morning. I’ll ask him to come at eight so you’ll be in plenty of time for the train.” She stopped for a moment and Eilis noticed a look of great weariness come over her. “And then I’m going to bed because I’m tired and so I won’t see you in the morning. So I’ll say goodbye now.”

  “It’s still early,” Eilis said.

  “I’d rather say goodbye now and only once.” Her voice had grown determined.

  Her mother came towards her, and, as Eilis stood up, she embraced her.

  “Eily, you’re not to cry. If you made a decision to marry someone, then he’d have to be very nice and kind and very special. I’d say he’s all that, is he?”

  “He is, Mammy.”

  “Well, that’s a match, then, because you’re all of those things as well. And I’ll miss you. But he must be missing you too.”

  Eilis was waiting for her mother to say something else as her mother moved and stood in the doorway. Her mother simply looked at her, however, without saying anything.

  “And you’ll write to me about him when you get back?” she asked eventually. “You’ll tell me all the news?”

  “I’ll write to you about him as soon as I get back,” Eilis said.

  “If I say any more, I’ll only cry. So I’ll go down to Dempsey’s and arrange the car for you,” her mother said as she walked out of the room in a way that was slow and dignified and deliberate.

  Eilis sat quietly in the kitchen. She wondered if her mother had known all along that she had a boyfriend in Brooklyn. The letters Eilis had written to Rose had never been mentioned and yet they must have turned up somewhere. Her mother had gone through Rose’s things with such care. She asked herself if her mother had long before prepared what she would say if Eilis announced that she was going back because she had a boyfriend. She almost wished her mother had been angry with her, or had even expressed disappointment. Her response had made Eilis feel that the very last thing in the world she wanted to do now was spend the evening alone packing her suitcases in silence with her mother listening from her bedroom.

  At first she thought that she should go to see Jim Farrell now, but then realized that he would be working behind the bar. She tried to imagine going into the pub and finding him there and trying to talk to him, or waiting while he found his father or his mother to take over the bar as she went out with him and told him that she was leaving. She could imagine his hurt, but she was unsure what exactly he would do, whether he would tell her that he would wait while she got a divorce and attempt to convince her to stay, or whether he would demand an explanation from her as to why she had led him on. Seeing him, she thought, would achieve nothing.

  She thought of writing a note to say that she had to go back and posting it in the door of his house for him to find either late that night or in the morning. But if he found it that night, he would instantly seek her out. Instead, she decided, she would drop the note in the door the following morning on her way to the railway station. She would simply say that she had to go back and she was sorry and she would write when she arrived in Brooklyn and would explain her reasons.

  She heard her mother coming back and walking slowly up the stairs to her room and she thought of following her, of asking her to stay with her while she packed, and talk to her. But there had been something, she thought, so steely and implacable about her mother’s insistence that she wanted to say goodbye only once that Eilis knew it would be pointless now to ask for her blessing or whatever it was she wanted from her before she left this house.

  In her room, she wrote the note to Jim Farrell, then left it aside; she pulled her suitcase out from under the bed and placed it on the bed and began to fill it with her clothes. She could imagine her mother listening as the wardrobe door was opened and hangers with clothes on them were pulled off the rail. She imagined her mother tensely following her as her footsteps crossed the room. The suitcase was almost full by the time she opened the drawer where she had kept Tony’s letters. She took them and slipped them in at the side of the case. She would read the ones she had not opened on her journey across the Atlantic. For a moment, as she held the photographs taken that day in Cush, the one with her and Jim and George and Nancy, and the one of her alone with Jim as they smiled so innocently at the camera, she thought she would tear them up and put them in the bin downstairs. But then she thought better of it and slowly took all her clothes out of the case and placed the two photographs face down safely at the bottom of the case and then covered them over again. Some time in the future, she thought, she would look at them and remember what would soon, she knew now, seem like a strange, hazy dream to her.

  She closed the case, carried it downstairs and left it in the hallway. It was still bright outside, and, as she sat at the kitchen table having something to
eat, the last rays of the sun came through the window.

  A few times over the hours that followed she was tempted to carry up a tray with tea and biscuits or sandwiches to her mother; her mother’s door remained closed and there was not a sound from the room. She knew that if she knocked on the door, or opened it, her mother would firmly tell her that she did not want to be disturbed. Later, when she decided to go to bed, Eilis passed the door of Rose’s room and thought to enter, to look for the last time at the place where her sister had died, but, although she stopped outside for a second and lowered her eyes in a sort of reverence, she did not open the door.

  As she had not drawn the curtains she was woken by the morning light. It was early and there was no sound except for bird-song. She knew that her mother would be awake too, listening for every sound. She moved quietly, carefully, putting on the fresh clothes she had left out for herself, going downstairs to stuff the old clothes with her toiletries into the suitcase. She checked that she had everything—money, her passport, the letter from the shipping company and the note for Jim Farrell. Quietly, she sat in the front parlour to watch out for Joe Dempsey’s car.

  When it arrived, she made sure she was at the door before he knocked. She put her finger to her lips to indicate that they should not speak. He put the suitcase in the boot of the car as she left her key to the house on the hallstand. As they drove away, she asked him to stop for a moment at Farrell’s in Rafter Street, and, when he did so, she dropped the note through the letter box of the hall door.

  As the train moved south, following the line of the Slaney, she imagined Jim Farrell’s mother coming upstairs with the morning post. Jim would find her note among bills and business letters. She imagined him opening it and wondering what he should do. And at some stage that morning, she thought, he would come to the house in Friary Street and her mother would answer the door and she would stand watching Jim Farrell with her shoulders back bravely and her jaw set hard and a look in her eyes that suggested both an inexpressible sorrow and whatever pride she could muster.