Authors: Elizabeth Adler
Irritably I pushed the bell beside my bed and a few minutes later I heard Brigid hurrying up the stairs and then her quick trot along the corridor. Her Wellingtons make a funny little slap and squish on the bare boards and I always know when it’s her, but then, who else would it be these days?
“Ye’ve been overdoing it,” she said, glaring at me, and I sank meekly back against my pillow, feeling like a child again. “Too much partying and too many late nights. Will ye niver admit yer an old woman and act yer age?”
I’ve never acted my age and she knows it and I don’t intend to start now, but I could see the worry in her brown eyes and I knew the old biddy loved me as much as I love her. Whatever should we do without each other? My heart trembles at the thought. We are each other’s lifeline, each other’s link with the past and our memories. And when you are our age there is more past than future. We sit of a winter’s evening in front of the kitchen fire, toasting ourselves among a clutter of dogs and cats with a glass of whiskey clutched in our hands to keep out the cold and fuel the memories, talking of “remember when …” Brigid knows all my memories as intimately as I know hers. Though I have to confess mine are more exciting.
Sure and she was a rock when some years ago I found that lump in my breast and the doctor said it would have to come off. I went home and took off my clothes and stared at myself in the mirror, at those twin round objects, always small but still firm and pretty, and always a woman’s pride: the badge of her femininity, potential nurturers of infants and a source of more pleasure than I will ever admit to in company. And I confess I was filled with self-pity.
I ran down the stairs to Brigid in the kitchen and she read from my face that the worst had been confirmed and we clung together, crying. “Y’ve to be strong, Maudie,” she
told me and I knew how deeply moved she was to be calling me by my name instead of simply “ye” or “madam,” which she only ever uses when she’s mad at me. And for her to be showing me overt affection as well, which is something we never do. I told her they were going to cut it off.
“Ye’ve the heart of a lion, Maudie. Ye’ll be fine,” she said staunchly. And then she added, “Is there no other way?”
“Radiation and chemotherapy,” I said. “A fifty-fifty chance. My hair will fall out, I’ll be sick as a dog all the time, and I shall be too weak to ride a horse.”
“Them’s all yer options?” I nodded. She considered them. “I never was one for the knife,” was all she said finally.
So I chose the chemo. But even then they couldn’t take my vanity away from me. I went to London, to one of those persons called a “top stylist” and ordered myself the brashest red wig, long and curly—like Ann-Margret, I looked. And I bought myself a dozen silk nighties and fluffy bedjackets and a few hundred books so I could still pretend it was like when I was a little girl and got sick. All my friends came, every day. Even on those days when I was not well enough to see them, they rallied around, the way we always had for each other. For almost two years I took it on the chin, feeling like hell. But I can tell you I never wanted to die. Dammit, no! I wanted to ride mad Malachy again and besides, nothing was going to get me away from Ardnavarna so easily.
When they told me I had gone into remission, I went straight to Dublin and I bought myself a pile of silk underwear that amazed the salesgirls at Brown Thomas. “There,” I told ’em, satisfied as they added up my enormous bill. “Now I
feel
better.”
Anyway, back to my rainy morning. Brigid kept me to my bed and I slept the day away, but I refused to give up my nightly audience. I put on my best nightie—-satin, my favorite for night attire, and pink because it’s flattering to
the pale skin and anyway I like the way it clashes so beautifully with my scarlet hair. I added a dash of pink lipstick and a little scent, and fastened my old ermine cape around my shoulders. I looked ready for a nightclub when the two young things trooped through my door later.
They had dined together by candlelight on my instructions because, after all, a little candlepower never did a girl’s looks any harm and I confess I’m encouraging any hint of romance between my “children.” They looked shy about seeing me in bed and I noticed they were holding hands as they walked toward me.
Aha,
I thought, but I said nothing. Teasing is never good for a beginning romance; it’s all so serious.
I shoved the dalmatians over and made room for them on the end of my big four-poster. Shannon sat cross-legged, looking rather anxiously at me and I was touched to see that she cared. I liked her more and more as each day passed, and now I wish I had known her father better. One brief glimpse of a dynamic man like that was not enough.
Eddie pulled up the old armchair. He draped his long body across it and flung his legs over the arm. He moves like an actor should, everything natural and unstudied, and graceful in a masculine way. He has a sense of humor that I like too.
“Love your outfit, Maudie,” he said with a grin, and I stroked my ermine proudly. It always feels like bunny fur to me even though it used to cost a fortune. When we still wore furs, that is.
“Thank you,” I said, because Mammie taught me to always accept a compliment politely instead of brushing it off with “Oh, this old thing?” the way so many girls do.
I said, “Tonight, my dears, our characters begin their new lives, and we shall follow each of them and see how they make out. Let us begin with Daniel and Finn, in Boston.”
J
ANUARY WAS BITTERLY COLD
in Boston, but it seemed even colder in the miserable slums of the North End. The narrow cobblestones were slippery with a layer of icy sleet as Daniel O’Keeffe made his way dispiritedly back to the tiny windowless cellar where they were living.
The wooden shacks leaned against crumbling brick houses that had once belonged to the better-off merchants of Boston. Before the Irish came, that is, swarming close to the wharves where they got off the boats, into every nook and cranny that afforded them shelter. The immigrants came in such numbers that Boston’s worthy burghers had been forced out of their homes up to Beacon Hill or Back Bay to find cleaner, more salubrious air, away from the Irish smells of poverty and sickness and despair.
And no one was more despairing than Daniel as he climbed slowly down the broken steps that led to his new “home.” Their cellar was dark and damp. It was bare but for the piles of straw and sacking spread on the floor for their bed and the wooden crate that served as a table, and it was almost as cold inside as it was out.
He pushed the flimsy door closed, hoping to cut off the ice-edged north wind that promised a foot of snow before too long. Finn was not home and he lit the single candle and thanked goodness for the small reprieve. At least it meant he didn’t have to tell him just yet that there had been more than a hundred other men after the same job he had hoped to secure on a road gang. He had pushed himself eagerly forward, hoping his brawny physique would attract the foreman’s attention, but there were plenty of other brawny Irishmen and ten had quickly been chosen before he could get himself noticed.
The cellar’s low ceiling forced him into a permanent crouch and he folded his hands around the candle flame to warm them. His belly growled angrily from hunger. It had been twenty-four hours since he had last eaten, if you could call the meager greasy stew, doled out in return for a
few cents at the saloon on the corner, a meal. Another few cents had brought the solace of a shot of whiskey to send the blood coursing in his veins, trying to chase out the cold.
A flimsy partition divided their cell from next door, where a whole family, a man, his wife, and four children lived in one room no bigger than their own and to whom they paid their rent of a dollar a week. He could hear the children bawling and fighting and the distraught mother screaming at them, but he was so used to it he scarcely heard it anymore. The whole building—the whole
street
—was filled with tiny hovels where large families struggled to keep their dignity and their sanity in a space no more than ten feet by nine. And he wondered how many of them wished bitterly they could turn back the clock and exchange their old familiar poverty in Ireland for this terrible new kind.
He glanced at the pile of straw in the corner, knowing that beneath it lay a fortune that could change their entire lives. How many nights had he watched Finn rummage in his hiding place and bring forth Lily Molyneux’s diamond necklace and run it through his fingers. Daniel had noticed how the jewels, like the people, seemed to have lost their sparkle beneath a layer of grime. He had listened to Finn repeat with venom how if he ever saw her again, he would wrap this same string of useless diamonds around Lily’s beautiful white throat and strangle her. For the diamond necklace had proved as valueless to them as a cheap paste imitation.
When they first arrived Finn had walked eagerly all the way uptown to find a smart jeweler. Dressed in his cord pants and rough tweed jacket and a clean shirt, with a woolen muffler knotted around his neck, all donated by the citizens of Nantucket out of the charity of their hearts to the poor Irish refugees, he had felt grand enough for anything—until he stepped over the threshold of the plushly carpeted jewelers.
A hush fell as the eyes of the grand morning-coated salesmen fastened on him. They regarded him with such
horror that he glanced down at himself to see that everything was all right and that he hadn’t maybe left his fly undone by mistake. But everything seemed intact, and removing his cap respectfully he had walked cautiously across to the shining glass display counter.
He had said a cheerful good morning, smiling around for a response, but none was forthcoming. The smile slipped from his face as two of the salesmen closed quickly in on him, one on either side. “We don’t want your sort in here, begging. Get out at once before we call the police.”
They thrust him out onto the sidewalk with a vicious push and locked the glass-paneled door safely behind him.
The threat of the cops rang like warning bells in his ears as he ran back down the hill. He realized too late that, of course, they would not let people like him into grand shops, and he thanked God he hadn’t shown them the necklace because they would certainly have thought he had stolen it and then for sure they would have had him arrested.
“But you
have
stolen it,” Daniel said stubbornly, when he told him the story that afternoon. “And that’s God’s truth.”
“No, it’s not,” Finn had retorted vehemently. “She owes it to us. Aye, and more!” And he had gone straight out again to the local pawnbroker, knowing he would get less money but at least it would be something. He told himself that later, when he got a job and was a grand success himself, he could retrieve it. Then, with his new respectability, no one would even think to question where he got such a valuable piece of jewelry. But the pawnbroker had glanced suspiciously at him and then said he didn’t deal with anything as expensive as this. It would be more than his life was worth if the cops came ferreting around. “They sees me with this,” he warned Finn, “I’ll only end up in jail alongside you.”
And so the necklace was thrown under the straw like a dog’s bone, as useless as an empty whiskey bottle to be dragged out and mourned over after a few drinks. And
now, six weeks after they had arrived, all their charity money was spent.
Daniel glanced up as he heard the ring of hobnailed boots on the icy steps and his brother came in. His handsome young face was pinched with the cold and covered with a few days’ black stubble, but there was a big smile in his gray eyes and he clutched a few paper-wrapped parcels to his chest.
“Look at this, Dan,” he cried, dropping the parcels onto the wooden crate. He rubbed his hands together and held them around the candle the way Daniel had, to warm them. “You’ll find a fresh loaf in there—none of yesterday’s rubbish for us. And the best Irish butter.
And
a half pound of German sausage from the delicatessen on North Street.” He delved inside his jacket and pulled forth a bottle of Irish whiskey and planted it on the crate. “That’ll warm you, old feller,” he said with a grin as Dan stared from him to the whiskey and back again in amazement. “And before you ask, I’ll be tellin’ ya. I changed two of Lily’s English sovereigns into dollars today.”
He hunkered down next to the wooden crate while he told Dan what had happened. “I went into St. Stephen’s Church to get out of the cold and to see if the old Holy Fellow upstairs could come up with an answer for us, seeing as we could not ourselves. But nothing was forthcoming and the sacristan was looking sideways at me, I’d been there so long. So I came out and walked along the streets for a while and then up the hill. And where should I find meself at the top?” He beamed excitedly at Daniel. “Why, brother, outside a bank, o’course. I thought to meself, I
have these fifty sovereigns strapped around me waist for safekeeping and doin’ me no good at all, so why don’t I just take meself into this bank and ask them, bold as you please, to change them into dollars.”
Opening the whiskey he took a slug and offered the bottle to Daniel. “They did it with niver a question. And do you know how much I got for those two little gold sovereigns, brother Dan?”
Daniel shook his head and Finn grinned triumphantly at him. “Ten whole Yankee dollars, old son, that’s how much I got for them.” He stared excitedly into his brother’s eyes. “Do you know how much I have strapped around me waist, boyo? In value, that is? The equivalent of two hundred and forty dollars.
A fortune, Dan. A whole God-blasted fortune.”
Dan stared speechlessly at him. A working man was lucky if he earned ten dollars a week to house and feed and clothe himself and his wife and numerous children.
And they had sovereigns worth two hundred and forty dollars.
“We could live for two years and four months on that,” Dan calculated quickly, suddenly as excited as his brother. He lifted the bottle to his lips and drank deeply. Relief and whiskey made his legs feel weak and he took another slug to steady himself.