Promised Land (10 page)

The driver slowed down as they tried to guess which one was Kitty’s, finally depositing her near the railings by the granite steps leading up to Kitty’s doorway. The number was missing, and paint peeled from the ornate glass and wood fanlight over the door. She studied the list of names scrawled alongside the hall doorbell, and recognizing what looked like
her
cousin’s name and loopy writing she pressed hard. From somewhere inside she could hear the noise of the doorbell and awaited her cousin’s appearance. There was no reply. She rang again and again, without success. A mounting sense of panic began to overwhelm her. What if Kitty was really sick, and gone to the doctor or even the hospital. What would she do then?

Eventually defeated, she sat on the steps ignoring the glances of passers-by and those who crossed over the road from the railed park opposite them. The smell of cooking drifted from an open window in the basement below, chips, fried liver and onions, bacon; an old woman in a faded overall glanced up at her suspiciously.

She had forgotten how hungry she was, and wished that Kitty would return soon and let her in. All around her people walked up and down the street, busy, minding their own business, not the slightest bit interested in her quandary. She rang the bell again and again. Where the hell was Kitty?

A good-looking young man took the steps two at a time and almost fell over her case. She watched as he let himself in with a key, and quickly managed to push the door in after him before it closed on her. Kitty’s flat was up on the fourth floor, right at the very top of the house. She dragged the case up stair after stair, over the threadbare carpet from landing to landing until panting and breathless she reached the top. She knocked on the heavy wooden door.

The sound reverberated all through the big old house and Ella almost imagined she heard noises coming from inside the door. It was useless; she would just have to wait for Kitty. Annoyed, she rang again, and this time she definitely did hear something. She recognized her cousin’s giggle.

‘Open up Kitty! It’s me, it’s Ella!’

‘Christ!’

Well, she heard that sure enough. Ella stood there on the landing as the bolt was pulled back and the door was opened.

‘Ella!’

There was shock, surprise, and disbelief in her cousin’s voice but no welcome. Kitty’s long hair was all tousled and she was holding the door slightly ajar, clad only in a multicoloured silk dressing gown, her bar legs and feet and chest all exposed. She looked really flushed, her green eyes drowsy, and Ella wondered if she might be running a temperature.

‘I thought that you weren’t coming to Dublin for another few days,’ sighed Kitty, trying to wrap the dressing gown round her modestly.

‘Can I come in? I’m exhausted and I’m just dying for a cup of tea.’

Kitty wouldn’t open the door any further and Ella wondered what her cousin was trying to conceal. It sounded like there was somebody else inside in the flat.

‘Oh Ella, there’s not a drop of milk in the kitchen. Be a pet and run to the shop on the corner and get some. It’s only across the road.’

Ella was flabbergasted, but then maybe Kitty had been too sick all day to go out.

‘Here, take my case and this time don’t forget to let me in! Why didn’t you let me in before?’

‘Sorry about that, Ella, but I must have been asleep.’

She felt immediately guilty and without any further ado agreed to get the milk, arriving back to the flat a few minutes later. She was just about to ring the bell when the front door opened and a handsome man with wavy black hair and a sports jacket stepped through, nodding at her as if he knew her. She watched as he crossed over the roadway.

This time when she got upstairs, Kitty had the door wide open for her and welcomed her with open arms.

‘Are you sick, Kitty? I called to the shop and one of the ladies there told me that you hadn’t been in work for a few days. What’s the matter with you?’

Kitty had led her into the large living room with its clutter of chairs and a sagging floral chintz-covered couch.

‘I’m grand, Ella, I just felt like a few days off. I’ve been working my fingers to the bone for the past few weeks and I needed a little holiday. You know what it’s like!’

Ella didn’t. Farmers never got holidays.

‘Here, let me show you the place,’ offered her cousin, anxious to change the subject.

There were two small bedrooms; obviously part of the large room had been partitioned off. Ella’s room had a small single bed, a mahogany wardrobe, a
bedside
table and a lamp. It looked out over the back of the house and a long narrow concrete yard. Hardly luxurious! Kitty’s room was larger and looked like some sort of hurricane had recently blown through it as bedclothes and clothing lay scattered all over the place. The wardrobe was so full of clothes that the door could no longer close, and Ella was surprised to see a photo of Kitty and the man in her life on the bed stand.

‘Isn’t he gorgeous!’ boasted Kitty proudly. ‘His name is Tom Donovan and he’s an engineer.’

The two of them sat on the bed looking at the photograph. Ella recognized the wavy hair and handsome face.

‘Kitty! He was here!’

At least her cousin had the grace to look shamefaced. ‘I just can’t resist him Ella, honest I can’t.’

‘And you sent me off like an eejit for milk.’

‘No, honest to God Ella, there isn’t a sup of milk in the place … really!’

Ella sighed. Living with her cousin had seemed like a good idea, but now she wasn’t so sure. She could see Kitty was thinking the same thing.

‘Come on down to the kitchen and I’ll make you a cup of tea and something to eat, you must be starving.’

The kitchen was tiny, a small poky room off the lower landing, the shared bathroom for their part of the house across from it. There was only one chair and Kitty put a cushion on top of an upturned orange box to create another seat. Ella sat
considering
what she was going to do as the kettle boiled.

Kitty pulled at tin boxes and two or three wonky-looking kitchen cupboards. ‘I’ve eggs, bacon, tomatoes. The sausages are gone off, the bread’s gone green. We’ll have to get some more in the morning. I could do us an omelette, would you like that?’

Ella was so hungry and tired she’d have eaten anything. She watched as her cousin dropped a knob of butter into a blackened frying pan and set it over the gas flame. The eggs were whisked together deftly in a blue bowl, as the tomatoes and bacon were fried quickly. Seconds later the two of them gulped down portions of the fluffiest omelette ever.

‘You know, tomorrow it will be your turn to cook.’

Ella looked up from her plate. ‘Are you sure about me staying, Kitty?’

The other girl nodded. ‘As long as you don’t go tittle-tattling on me to Mammy and Daddy, agreed?’

They hugged each other.

‘Now Ella, tell me about home and what the hell is going on at Fintra!’

Dublin 1954

Chapter Ten

KITTY KAVANAGH WAS
awake half the night talking with her cousin. She couldn’t believe the state that Ella was in, all agitated and tense, and she looked absolutely wretched. Her mother had written her a long rambling letter telling her of the situation and warning her to be nice to her cousin. She’d always been nice to Ella, they all had. She could still remember that awful day when their mother had arrived home with Ella, and the news that her mother had passed away in the hospital and that she’d be staying with them for a few days. Even Slaney had been good and not demanded her usual attention.

Constance had explained to them all what had happened to Auntie Helena and how Ella would never ever see her mother again. They’d all cried for their cousin and the enormity of her loss, thankful for their own mother and each other. So Ella had in time become a part of their lives. Kitty supposed that growing up together, and spending
all
those hours and hours of childhood in each other’s company, meant that she and Ella could be good friends without the burden and rivalry of sisterhood.

‘Liam’s a bastard to take the farm from you!’ She couldn’t help but speak her mind, seeing the misery and hurt apparent in Ella’s face. ‘You worked that farm and slaved on the place and this is your reward, him telling you to feck off and go to Dublin!’ Kitty always believed in plain speaking and telling the truth, even if it did get her into trouble. She wasn’t going to try and palaver her cousin and pretend this was nothing.

‘It’s just that it’s so bloody unfair, Kitty! Farming and the land is all I know. I can’t imagine myself not living and working at Fintra.’

‘I hated the farm and the blasted farm work,’ Kitty admitted honestly. ‘Daddy was always complaining and trying to get me to do more. If he’d had his way I’d still be down there, queen of the milking parlour and married to some local farmer’s son.’

‘That wouldn’t be too bad.’

‘Bad!’ Kitty sighed. ‘It would be fecking awful, Ella! I’m not like you. Do you remember when Daddy used to make me walk the cows home in the evening for milking? I hated it! I’d pretend to be doing anything else but walking those stupid animals back to the parlour. Sure I’d walk nearly half a mile behind them, pretending that I hadn’t a clue how this herd of dairy cows had managed to
get
out on the Kilgarvan road, and that I was only out for a stroll myself. One time I even managed to lose five of them and it took us hours and hours to find them. Daddy was like a lunatic, he nearly killed me! Another time one of the stupid yokes fell into the ditch and I had to wade in to get her and pull and haul her out of it. I was knee-deep in shite and stagnant water. The smell of dung off me was only desperate! And didn’t I meet the Corish brothers on the way home and the jeer they made of me. I was puce! The youngest fellow used to hold his nose every time he ever saw me after that. I was mortified, Ella, plain mortified.’

Ella couldn’t help herself laughing. And Kitty was glad to cheer her up. She had no regrets about leaving her farming roots behind her and had big plans to make something of herself here in the city and find the man of her dreams, who would when the time was right sweep her off her feet. It was tougher on Ella, because all her hopes and ambitions had always been tied up in the farm, and even Sean Flanagan had been part of that dream. Kitty hoped that Ella would start over again and make something of this new life in Dublin. She was welcome to share the flat and Kitty hoped that the right sort of job would turn up just when her cousin needed it.

Kitty had to go to work early the next morning but had run over to the shops and left a loaf of crusty fresh bread and a pint bottle of milk for Ella. For
the
next two days her cousin slept and slept, not stirring from the flat at all. Kitty made no comments, only ensuring Ella ate and supplying her with constant cups of tea and a mug of hot whisky at night to make her sleep. It was as if her cousin was sick or injured, she seemed so exhausted and tired.

Ella had little or no memory of the weekend, only that the blonde and dark-haired girls from the room across the landing, Terri and Gretta, seemed to be in and out of the flat all the time and she felt too tired to talk to any of them. On Sunday Kitty had made her get up and dressed and the two of them had walked through almost empty streets to mass at the church in Clarendon Street, Ella only realizing when Kitty passed her a cotton handkerchief that she was actually crying. Afterwards they had sat in the city centre park, St Stephen’s Green, watching a mother duck and her young ducklings swim up and down the lake, as Kitty told her all the things they would do together and the places they would visit. In only a few short days she began to feel somewhat better. Gretta, who was petite, with large doe-eyes, was like a mini whirlwind in the flat and had shown Ella how to use the temperamental cooker in the shared kitchen; Ella had surprised Kitty and the girls by having a big saucepan of stew ready when they came home from work.

The four of them had sat down together at the
small
table in Terri and Gretta’s bedsit and shared it, burning their mouths on the potatoes and gravy. Gretta was from Cork and worked as a nurse in the nearby St Vincent’s Hospital up on the Green, while Terri worked as a hairdresser in a salon on Wicklow Street. They were good friends and flatmates and were much the same age as Kitty and Ella though Terri was very glamorous and had her hair bleached blond like Marilyn Monroe.

On her day off Kitty had insisted it was high time that Ella saw some of the city and they’d walked down to O’Connell Street, the statue of Daniel O’Connell, ‘The Liberator’, at one end of it and the Rotunda Hospital at the other. They had climbed Nelson’s Pillar right to the top getting a look over much of the city. Ella loved the way the River Liffey wound its way right through the city, the courthouses and Customs House and second-hand booksellers all set along its quays and the crowded bridges that spanned it.

‘When the tide’s out it smells something awful!’ warned Kitty.

They went into the G.P.O. and Kitty posted a letter to her mother and bought some stamps. Ella could not believe the size and grandeur of the place and that she was actually standing in the same post office building where the men of the 1916 Rising had fought against the British Army. They looked in Clery’s and Boyer’s and Arnott’s, just some of the big department stores, Kitty making Ella try
on
skirts and blouses and jackets, reminding her, ‘You’re not back in Kilgarvan now!’

She had tried on a figure-hugging black skirt with a kick pleat at the back and a matching jacket with a detailed collar.

‘You’ve a great figure, Ella, and you should show it off more.’

In the mirror it made Ella look different, like a film star, all curves. Her stomach looked flat, and her neck seemed longer.

‘You’ve got to buy it, Ella, it was made for you.’

Kitty didn’t even bother looking at the price ticket but told the lady that her cousin was buying it. Ella got a shock when she had to take the money from her purse and pay. It was the most expensive piece of clothing that she’d ever purchased, she confided. Her old shoes and blouses would not go with it and Kitty coaxed her into buying a pair of tiny narrow-toed black shoes that she assured her looked divine, and a white blouse with a soft collar and a simple pink and white print one that would also go with it.