Cashelmara (76 page)

“Good afternoon, suh,” said the black man, raising his top hat and bowing respectfully. “Please come this way, suh.”

“Wait … my wife … son … the bags …”

The black man gently took the checks from my hand and said he would attend to the bags. I started to wave frenziedly at Sarah and Ned, and as they left their bench someone tapped me on the shoulder.

I spun around. Facing me was a stout man of about my own age. He wore the best-cut coat I’d seen in a month of Sundays and he carried a silver-topped cane and he was smiling an Irish smile.

“Welcome to Boston, Max,” he said brightly, his blue eyes the color of the lough at Cashelmara, and I thought: Dear God, is there ever a race that hangs together like the Irish? And the tears filled my eyes as I thought of us all, condemned to exile thousands of miles from home and yet rising from the ashes of pestilence and persecution to triumph over all our adversities. Yes, I know that was sentimental, but I’m an Irishman, and God knows I was never prouder of being Irish than when that stranger came forward in a city where I knew no one and offered me his hand to shake as he called me by my Christian name.

“My name is Phineas Gallagher,” he was saying, “and indeed any friend of my brother Liam’s is already a friend of mine. Come outside to my carriage and let me take you to my house on Beacon Hill.”

I knew Liam’s brother was successful enough to be well heeled, but it came as a surprise to me to find I hadn’t exaggerated to Sarah when I’d told her he was rich and influential. I knew that, like Jim O’Malley, he had his finger in the gambling pie, but Liam had never mentioned the real-estate deals, the companies and corporations. Perhaps he was a little jealous, for Phineas was his younger brother and they’d both started out in America with nothing but the rags on their backs.

But Phineas Gallagher had come a long way since he’d stepped off that coffin ship. His new house didn’t face the Common, for all the old gentry clung to those houses, and Boston was a snobbish place, worse than New York, but it faced a pretty square and he kept his wife and daughters in very refined style. His wife was a cheerful Irish girl not much older than Sarah, and she knew all about dainty manners and the latest smart charity to support. I thought Eileen would have liked her. The four daughters learned the piano and studied Italian and sewed samplers, just as she had when she was growing up, and I suppose that’s all very well, but personally, as I said to Eileen whenever she raised the subject, I think my own girls were just as happy learning how to milk the cows and bake good bread.

The Gallagher house wasn’t as big as the Marriott mansion, but it was much more fun to live in. The rooms were decorated with a magnificent slapdash gaiety. They had one parlor decorated entirely in emerald green with marble shamrocks on the mantel, and in every bedroom was a brightly colored plaster statue of the Virgin and Child. As for the dining room, it was a starving man’s dream. Great big steaks the size of platters, potatoes even more luscious than those Liam served at Ryan’s, black pudding, Irish sausage, cheese—soft cheese, mind you, Irish cheese, none of that hard stuff that looks like candle tallow—and buttermilk so rich a leprechaun could have danced on it. As for the whisky—“Jesus!” I exclaimed. “It’s got the kick of poteen!” And almost weeping with delight at finding myself in a true Irish home at last, I quite forgot all my two-edged opinions of the Irish-Americans.

“It’s a pity there’s no boy for you to play with, Ned,” said Sarah, but I was already thinking those four girls would do him the world of good. They were all plump—small wonder when you remember the food their mother served at table—and they all giggled a great deal, and they were all named for Irish places. It was hard to tell one girl from another, but in descending order of height their names were Clare, Kerry, Connemara and Donegal. The last two, known as Connie and Donagh, were still under ten, but Kerry was twelve and Clare two years older, so Ned did have company of his own age.

I was anxious to start work and not outstay our welcome, but Phineas Gallagher was hospitality itself and insisted we should take our time about finding an apartment. Meanwhile, he put me in charge of the gambling at his new concert saloon and promised me a salary that was nearly double what I’d been making with Jim O’Malley.

It did occur to me to wonder what he was after, but since I couldn’t see I had anything he wanted I decided to accept his generosity at face value. Anyway I was sure he liked me as much as I liked him, and I thought we all got along very well together. To be sure there was a little awkwardness when it came to Sunday Mass, but he said quick as a flash as soon as he saw I was embarrassed, “I’m not a priest, Max, and I’ll not be sitting in judgment on you,” and that was a great relief to me, for he could easily have had strong views on adultery. Phineas had heard through Liam that Sarah and I weren’t married, but his wife didn’t know and neither did the girls. Our absence from Mass was taken to be because we were Protestants, so every Sunday morning I escorted Sarah and Ned to Trinity Church on Copley Square. I never went inside, of course. I might have been a bad Catholic, but I still had my principles, and no one was going to see me crossing the threshold of a Black Protestant church.

In the middle of August Phineas invited us to join him while he and his family spent a month at his villa at Newport.

“Of course we can’t go,” said Sarah at once when I told her about the invitation. “It really would be abusing their hospitality, Maxwell. Don’t you think we might look for an apartment now?”

“What’s wrong with a month by the sea?” I said. “I thought you’d like that.”

“I’d rather be by ourselves,” she said, “in a home of our own.” And there was something about the way she glanced around our bedroom that told me the whole story.

“You don’t like them, do you?” I said suddenly. “You don’t like Phineas and you don’t like Maura. Why?”

She was silent.

“Sarah?”

“Oh …” She made a small graceful gesture with her hands and turned away. “They’re very kind, of course,” I heard her say, “and very hospitable, but … Well, they’re so shoddy, Maxwell! I mean shoddy in the New York sense of
nouveau riche
—”

“Thank you,” I said, “but I’ve lived long enough in New York to know the meaning of the word ‘shoddy-rich.’”

“I mean … well, look at this house! The ghastly taste in furnishings, the dreadful wallpaper, all those cheap, vulgar religious statues! And I find Maura Gallagher’s attempts at social climbing pathetic to say the least. Just because she can afford to send a thousand dollars every now and then to her favorite charity and give those girls of hers ideas far above their station, she thinks …”

She saw my face and stopped. There was a silence.

“I don’t mean to be unkind,” she said in a rush. “I didn’t mean …”

She stopped again. She was twisting the wedding ring around and around on her finger. “I’m sorry,” she said rapidly at last. “Of course we can go to Newport if you like. I’m sorry, Maxwell. I didn’t mean what I said.”

“Oh yes you did!” I said. “You meant every goddamned word, you snobbish little bitch!”

She began to cry, saying over and over again that she was sorry.

“Listen to me,” I said, taking her by the shoulders and shaking her into silence. “What’s good enough for me is good enough for you, and if you don’t see that you can go back to your blue-blooded sot of a husband and good riddance. I can always find another woman to sleep with me.”

It was a terrible thing to say. I knew it was terrible, but I couldn’t stop myself. I looked at her and suddenly I was looking beyond her into the past and listening to Eileen calling my fine farm a hovel, saying she’d always wished she’d never married beneath her. I felt as if someone had plunged a knife into my guts and was wrenching the blade around and around in the torn flesh.

Sarah was sobbing. Her face was twisted with grief and she was tearing her clothes, offering herself to me, saying she’d do anything, anything at all so long as I’d promise not to leave.

Sanity returned to me like a wet slap across the face. I groped for her, pulling her torn bodice back over her breasts and stroking her hair as I held her close to me. After a long while I said I was sorry. I was still holding her close, and when she stopped crying I said, “Of course I’ll never leave you. Why do you think I gave you a wedding ring? It’s the finest woman in all the world you are and me the luckiest man alive.”

“If only we could be married,” she said. She was trying to dry her eyes. “If only …” And she started to weep again.

I knew at once what she was thinking because she had often spoken of it before. “Sweetheart, I thought we’d agreed long ago that it’s best there can be no baby.”

“Yes, I know, but I should feel safer … more secure …”

“Then it’s a terrible failure I’ve been if you can only feel sure of me with a child in your arms.”

“It’s not that. But I do so love babies, and I would like … so much …”

“I know.” Indeed I did feel sorry for her, for I knew how much she regretted that a past sickness prevented her from having another child, but at the same time I couldn’t help but secretly look upon it as a blessing in disguise. Of course if we’d had a child I’m sure I would have been pleased, but romance has a mysterious way of dissolving at the first flap of a baby’s shawl, and it wasn’t as if neither of us had brought a child into the world before.

“At least we have Ned,” said Sarah, trying hard to be sensible. “I’m sure he’ll enjoy a visit to the shore.”

“We won’t go for the whole month,” I said. “We’ll go for a week so as not to give Phineas offense, but then we’ll come back to Boston and find a fine apartment.” I was wondering as I spoke if Ned too privately rated his new surroundings shoddy-rich, but although I watched him closely I saw no sign of discontent. His appetite, which had dwindled in New York, had returned. He wolfed down plate after plate of that delicious Irish food, and later I heard him laughing as he played in the garden with the girls. The girls would giggle and scream and Ned would be almost rowdy.

“It’s a wonderful thing to see young people enjoying themselves,” said Phineas Gallagher benignly. It was the night before we were all due to leave for Newport, and he and I were alone in the dining room after dinner. “Help yourself to a cigar, Max, my friend,” he added with his usual hospitality after the servants had withdrawn, “and let’s have a cozy little chat together.”

No cat ever crept up to a mouse as daintily as Phineas Gallagher tiptoed up to me that night.

“Let me tell you a secret,” he said as we lighted our cigars and caressed our glasses of port, “I’m thinking of going into politics.”

“Politics! Why, that’s a grand idea, Phineas!”

“Well …” He sighed. “I’d like to do something with my money, and a little power never did a man much harm. Politics ain’t much in America, but it would give those snobs something to think about if I became Mayor of Boston. They couldn’t look down their noses at me then, could they? Now, I never thought I’d give two cents for what the snobs think, but it’s amazing how your values change when you find your wife’s been slighted and your little girls made to cry for something that ain’t their fault. It’s an unjust world and no mistake.”

“It’s a terrible world, Phineas,” I said, tucking into my port.

“What I want now,” he said, puffing away at his cigar, “is to be respectable. It’s my dearest wish in life. I want my darling wife and girls to be happy and treated as ladies.”

“Very proper too,” says I, thinking what good port it was.

“So I’m selling out of my gambling interests,” he said, “and I’m selling out my share in the brothels too. My money’s going to be clean, as clean as the purest money in all Boston, for politics is a low-down dirty game, Max, as we both know, and a man’ll make enemies who’ll stop at nothing to fling mud at him and make it stick.”

I forgot the port. “You’re selling out of the gambling interests?” I said nervously, thinking of my job.

“That’s right, Max, but don’t worry. I’ll not let you down. I’ve taken a real liking to you, Max, and I want to do all I can to help you. Indeed I can’t remember when I last met a man I liked as much as I like you.”

We swore eternal friendship and drained our glasses. He filled them up. I wondered what was coming.

“Well, Max,” says he when we’re puffing our cigars again, “I’ve been honest with you and told you my dearest wish in life. What’s your dearest wish, may I ask, if you’ll be so good as to be honest with me?”

“Why, sure I’ll be honest with you, Phineas,” I said. “My dearest wish is to go back to Ireland and settle an old score with my landlord’s agent who ruined me.”

“There’s something about a pardon, isn’t there—or am I mistaken? Liam mentioned it, but perhaps he didn’t get the story straight.”

I told him about MacGowan and my trial. I’d never told him about it before since I’d had no wish for him to know I was an escaped convict. I’d simply told him I’d left Ireland after a dispute with my landlord. Of course I’d planned to confide in him later and seek his help, but he’d been so generous to me since my arrival that I hadn’t liked to ask for too much too soon.

“To be sure that’s the greatest miscarriage of justice I ever did hear!” said Phineas. “Have a little more port.”

I absent-mindedly reached for the decanter.

“A packed jury, you say,” said Phineas, “and your landlord and his agent sleeping in each other’s beds, the terrible perverted sinners, may God have mercy upon their souls.”

“Everything they did was illegal,” I said, grinding out my cigar. “I was no ordinary tenant. I had a deed of leasehold to my land and Lord de Salis couldn’t evict me as he could the others, but once I was taken prisoner by the military my home was set on fire. They claimed it was an accident but it was deliberate, for my deed of leasehold was destroyed and afterward Lord de Salis says he knows nothing of any deed and that I invented the story and that as I’m just a tenant like anyone else he’s evicting me. I wanted to have a lawyer, but I had no money and they wouldn’t let me see a lawyer anyway. There was nothing I could do but wait in jail for my trial, and when I was tried that bastard MacGowan told lies to convict me and every man on that jury was a Protestant and the judge had been born in a place called Warwick, which is in England, so he was as good as a Saxon for all he was an Irish judge.”