Promised Land (18 page)

‘Ella! There’s a customer for you!’ Leo called.

Annoyed that Leo wouldn’t deal with it himself she came out front.

Mac was just standing there in his raincoat, dripping all over the carpet. ‘I thought that I’d call in and see how you are.’

She gave a slow sort of smile, hoping that he didn’t guess how excited she really was at seeing him. Leo leaned on the counter watching them.

‘Are you doing anything for lunch?’

She wasn’t about to admit that she had wolfed down three slices of brown bread and some cheese with a cup of tea, only twenty minutes earlier.

‘No. I’ve no arrangements made, why?’

‘I thought we might go around the corner and get a bite to eat, that’s if you fancy it.’

She did fancy it, definitely, and grabbed her coat and umbrella from the stand in the back.

‘Take your time, Miss Kennedy and enjoy your
lunch
,’ suggested Leo. ‘I’m not expecting a stampede of customers today.’

She shot him a look of utter gratitude before she and Mac raced through the rain to the coffee bar in South Anne Street, squeezing into a narrow booth at the back of the restaurant. They both ordered, Mac selecting a dish of their famous spaghetti bolognese while she decided on the plaice and chips.

‘How have you been?’ he quizzed her, touching the tips of her fingers across the table.

‘Fine,’ she lied, ‘just fine.’

She found herself staring at him, noticing that even in daylight he looked as good as she remembered, especially wearing the navy suit which accentuated his shoulders.

‘I think Frank and Kitty have become an item.’

‘Yeah, they seem to be seeing each other and I know Kitty likes him.’

They grinned at each other stupidly, in the noisy atmosphere of the restaurant, before talking about the weather, and work and Dublin, and even their favourite films. An hour later, they found themselves sipping frothy Italian coffee and reluctant to part.

‘I’d better be getting back to work,’ she said eventually, not wanting to spoil their lunch but also conscious that in spite of his goodwill Leo was expecting her.

Mac leaned over across the table towards her. ‘There’s a crowd from work meeting up in
Mulligan’s
pub on Friday night. Would you like to come along?’

She hesitated, unsure about joining his bank crowd in some pub or other at the weekend.

‘Kitty’s coming along, I believe.’

‘Oh, then that’s fine,’ She was so relieved that Kitty was going. ‘I’ll come too.’

Mac settled the bill and helped her into her coat before walking her back to the shop. He was overdue at the bank himself and barely had time to say goodbye before leaving her.

Leo was in a flap and disappeared for a costume fitting the minute she returned, making no mention of Mac.

Kitty and she had dressed up like two dog’s dinners to go and meet the boys in the pub on Friday night and had garnered a chorus of wolf whistles from the drinkers around the bar. Frank had laughed good-humouredly, but she could tell Mac was annoyed. They jostled in the crowd and eventually he found her a bar stool, on which she tried to balance herself. On and off Mac would come talking to her but the rest of the time she was left trying to keep up with the gossip of strangers. At the end of the night when the bar staff called closing time she was actually relieved. Somebody suggested going back to a house in Ranelagh but she had no interest.

‘I’ve to work early in the morning, Mac, and open up, Saturday is our busiest day.’

He nodded, understanding, and walked her back to the Square.

She was in two minds about inviting him up to the flat for a cup of tea, but before she could say a word he had briefly kissed her good night and disappeared off into the darkness. Annoyed with herself and frustrated she genuinely doubted that she would ever see him again. She was just so awkward and self-conscious around him. Why couldn’t she just act normally?’

Amazingly, the following week he took her to the Theatre Royal, where both of them were entranced by Dublin’s top variety show. She in turn invited him to see Leo’s play at the Gate. Her boss had distributed a number of free passes to his friends and Mac and she cheered wildly at the curtain call at they end.

‘Bravo! Bravo!’ they called.

‘He’s falling for you!’ teased Kitty.

‘Do you think so?’ asked Ella, still very unsure. Mac was a Protestant, six years older than her and seemed to have had his fair share of romantic involvements over the years. He had only broken up with a girlfriend from Belfast a while before.

‘God, of course he is! You should see the look in his eye when he sees you, and you know he gets dead jealous if another fellah even looks crooked at you.’

Ella had to admit that was true, Mac didn’t like her flirting with other men or encouraging them.
When
she thought of him she felt warm inside, for somehow or other Mac seemed to have killed the desperate loneliness that had engulfed her since she came to the city. Before, she had dreaded the weekends and the evenings when she came home from work to the four walls of the flat, and the grey city streets and walls that surrounded her. Mac had changed all that. The two of them were spending more and more time together, and Mac would arrive out of the blue and take her somewhere. He owned an Austin, and on Sundays the two of them often drove up to the Dublin mountains, walking hand in hand through the Pine Forest and on Three Rock Mountain, stopping off for chips on the way home. Kitty was no longer seeing Frank and yet was discreet enough to give them some time on their own in the flat, barely batting an eyelid when she caught them wrapped up in each other on the sitting-room couch.

Mac and she were becoming more and more intimate, but Ella was determined not to rush into something too quickly. Her growing love for Mac was too important for that. She knew he felt the same and respected her. Perhaps the memory of her disastrous affair with Patrick Ryan was still too strong. But Mac and Patrick were very different types of men, and she knew that Mac was decent and honest and good and kind, and very protective of her.

She hoped that Mac would be patient for although she was madly in love with him, she was
nervous
of taking the next step of becoming lovers.

Kitty was back with her old flame, Tom, and Ella watched enviously the ease with which her cousin enjoyed a mad passionate reunion with him.

‘Frank couldn’t hold a flame to him, honest Ella he couldn’t. Tom and I are meant for each other.’

Some nights Kitty didn’t bother coming home, and other nights Tom and she could barely contain themselves till they got to Kitty’s bedroom.

At times Ella felt lika spinster aunt rather than a girl almost the same age as her sexy cousin. I’m such a fuddy-duddy prude, she worried, and I’ll die a virgin.

Dublin 1957

Chapter Twenty-one

LEO O’BYRNE WAS
beside himself with excitement, as he had landed a major part in a new production of
The Merchant of Venice
at the Gate Theatre. The producer had seen him in the previous play and had now offered him the part of Shylock, which meant he spent every spare minute rehearsing. The shop was a port of call for every actor and actress in Dublin who had a part in the same production and Ella was kept busy trying to deal with customers as well as his theatrical coterie, and at the same time keep Leo calm and relaxed. The doctor had said his blood pressure was high, but that didn’t deter him a bit from performing.

‘I’ll be fine, Ella, don’t you worry.’

She did worry, hoping that he wasn’t taking on too much. The shop window needed redoing and although she dropped a few hints to Leo, he always seemed to have other things on his mind.

‘Do it yourself, Ella! I’m sure you can manage to arrange a window that will attract customers.’

She looked around at their stock and came up with an idea that she thought might work. Kitty was going down home to Kilgarvan at the weekend and Ella asked her to bring one or two things back to Dublin.

Monday was quiet, with lashing rain, sending people scurrying for umbrellas and shelter, many did not come into town at all. Ella was glad of the opportunity to climb into the shop window and set it up just the way she wanted it. She was proud as Punch of the window and blushed red when Leo and Neil both remarked on her artistic talent and design skills.

Mac took her out that night to the latest Elizabeth Taylor film and sitting there in the dark feeling happy and relaxed with him Ella realized that she no longer pined for the farm and the life she had before.

‘Will you come back for coffee to the flat?’ she suggested, too tired to go to a pub.

Mac agreed. He got on well with all the rest of the girls, now that he was considered her boyfriend. Arm in arm they strolled through the city. It was such a nice evening that throngs of people were out walking. In the distance she could see a crowd standing near the corner of Leo’s shop. She hoped everything was all right.

‘Mac, do you mind if we go down by the shop?’

There didn’t seem to be an accident or anything. People were just clustered on the street corner,
looking
and talking. Was it her window that was causing the stir? She let go of Mac’s hand and pushed her way through to the window. It was just the way she’d set it out. The old broken spinning wheel that she’d found in the storeroom, set up so that it looked fine, the hanks of coloured wool, the array of knitted goods and fine tweeds, and the fluffy white sheepskin that Kitty had brought her up from home. What was all the fuss about? Seconds later she spotted the scurry of movement. One rat, no, two! God almighty, she couldn’t believe it. The rats were nibbling at the back of the sheepskin. It couldn’t have been cured properly. Mac was doubled up laughing, tears running down his face as she stared horrified at her handiwork. She hadn’t her shop keys with her and even though she rang Leo’s bell she knew full well he would be at the theatre. He’d kill her. Likely he’d sack her or she’d lose her job over such an incident. She stood there for over half an hour and the rat pair cavorted in the shop window, crowds of passers-by stopping to stare at the spectacle. In the end Mac persuaded her to come home, and regaled her flatmates with what happened. She was expecting sympathy and a bit of support from them and instead they all got hysterics laughing.

She was awake most of the night worrying and went to work early the next morning. The flat bell disturbed Leo as he was having breakfast.

‘Do come in my dear,’ he said, inviting her to
come
upstairs and join him and Neil for a cup of tea and some rashers and sausages.

‘Leo, something terrible has happened! There’s rats in the shop window. I’m so sorry but I think they must have smelled the sheepskin I put on display and come up after it!’

Leo laughed so much she thought he’d burst a blood vessel and Neil had to fetch him a glass of water.

‘I’m fed up telling the Corporation about the rat troubles we have under the street but they never want to know. This time they will have to pay a bit of attention, and mark my word, no-one is putting a foot in the shop till the rat-catcher has been. I just couldn’t bear it!’

The story did the rounds and even the shop girls from Lennon’s would drop in and ask her about the rats. She realized how good an employer Leo was, that he hadn’t forced her to leave the job and still had faith in her abilities. She could never repay all his kindness to her.

‘The customers love you Ella, and in business that’s what matters.’

On the opening night Ella had sat with Neil, both of them a bag of nerves, needlessly worrying as Leo gave a magnificent performance as the wily old Jew. At the end of the show he got a standing ovation along with the rest of the cast, a rare enough phenomenon, from the Dublin crowd. Next day Dublin’s newspapers carried rave reviews
for
the play itself and the masterful Shylock as played by the well-known Dublin stage actor Leo O’Byrne. Neil and Ella felt immensely proud of him.

As the weather improved her boyfriend Mac spent almost every Saturday from Easter on crewing on a yacht out in Howth, owned by his friend Alex Barry’s father. Ella was busy working and would join Alex and himself later for a drink and if Mac was not too tired go for supper. His hair had lightened to yellow gold, his skin tanned with the sea breeze, so that he looked even more handsome than ever clad in his casual sailing clothes.

‘Why don’t you come out with us this Sunday, Ella? Dr Barry is away and Alex has the use of the boat,’ Mac offered.

‘Go on Ella! You’ll enjoy it. My girl Margaret is coming along too.’

Ella had never been out in a yacht. Her only experience of boats was the small pontoon that she and her brother and father had used out on the lake. Growing up in Wexford she was well used to seeing sail boats and ships come in and out of port or along the quays but she had never actually sailed in any of them.

The thought of the sea air and skimming through the water was certainly appealing and she gladly accepted.

* * *

Terri made her tie her hair back in a neat ponytail. ‘Otherwise it’ll be all tangled and all over the place.’

Kitty provided her with a pair of dark sunglasses, which she assured her gave her the Grace Kelly look, and Gretta had brought her home some seasick pills from the hospital pharmacy. Copying Mac’s casual look she wore a pair of sneakers and a pair of white slacks, with a warm navy sweater.

Howth was busy, packed with sun-seekers and those just out for a Sunday drive or walk. They spotted Alex out on the deck of his boat the
Mary-Rose
and Mac asked one of the other regular sailors to ferry them out to it. Up close the yacht was bigger than she’d expected, and she was content to let the men pull and haul at the ropes and sail as they got under way. Alex’s girlfriend Margaret was down in the cabin unpacking sandwiches, cake, flasks of tea and a few beers that she’d brought along.

‘We’ll have a picnic later!’

Alex’s younger brother John and his friend Owen were busy jumping around the place following orders. The boat slipped out of the harbour and catching the breeze began to move, swishing through the water at a great pace. Ella breathed in the salty air as the coastline became more and more distant. They sailed out past Ireland’s eye and beyond Malahide and Skerries, where the beach was crowded with day trippers. She could feel the sun warm on her skin and stretched
out
along the deck as Alex and Mac decided to drop anchor. Mac came to sit in the sun beside her.